House of Reps turns down NCAA’s request for N130m security allocation

House of Representatives Committee on Aviation has turned down a request by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to spend N130 million in carrying out security audit of all airports in the country.
The request was turned down on Thursday in Abuja during the budget defence of agencies under the aviation sector.
The committee also frowned at the NCAA’s tradition of spending 98 per cent of its budgetary allocation on recurrent expenditure, with two per cent set aside for capital projects.
Chairman of the Committee, Nkeirukà Onyejeocha (Abia-PDP), recalled querying the same items put at N135 million in 2015 budget, based on reasons bordering on redundancy of most airports in the country.
The committee also frowned at unspent N16 billion accumulated security levy, lying idle at NCAA.
The committee said in spite of that, the authority still budgeted another N16 billion security levy, when it did not remit unspent funds to the Federation Account.
Onyejeocha, however, instructed NCAA to re-adjust some of the sub-heads in the budget and get back as soon as possible for final legislative work
Mr Mukhtar Usman, the Director General of NCAA, informed the lawmakers that the agency strictly operated within its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and gets no funding from the Federal Government.