The Senate, the Nigerian upper legislative house of the National Assembly has commended the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for the judicious use of its 2023 revenue, capital and recurrent expenditure.
This is even as it approved the 2024 N549.6 Billion budgetary projection of the Commission.
At the joint sitting of the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Communications presided by Senator Ikra Bilbis (Zamfara Central) which had in attendance the EVC/CEO of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Dr. Aminu Maida, the lawmakers noted the 2023 report presented by the NCC is up to date.
“We believe there are no discrepancies in the report,” Senator Steve Karimi from Kogi West said in his contribution during the meeting.
“The report we have is an updated report and we have the latest performance report,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida has informed the Lawmakers of the resolve of the commission not to make “operators sanctions” as its main source of revenue, stressing that the NCC has devised measures to make it easy for operators in the country to comply with its regulatory directives.
“For us, charging the operators is not an efficient way of encouraging them. We don’t want to make sanctions as a source of revenue. That is why we increased our budget for regulatory expenses,” the Sun Newspaper quoted him to have said.
Also responding to questions on tracking Kidnappers, bandits and other criminals, Dr. Aminu stated that he and his team were working tirelessly to address the issue stressing that the Agency is working in synergy with the Nation’s security agencies to provide a platform that will aid the easy tracking of criminals to solve the Nation’s security problems.
According to the 2023 budget performance report presented by the NCC Boss which ended on December 31st an actual revenue of N448.1bn was realised out of a projected budget of N559.080bn. Its total recurrent expenditure stood at N67.072bn while its capital expenditure was at N3.6m.
Subsequently, the 2024 N549.6bn budget proposal of the Agency was approved via voice votes of the committee members following a motion moved by Senator Tahir Monguno (Borno North) and was ratified by the committee chairman Senator Ikra Aliyu.