The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has asked the Federal Government and the National Assembly to appropriate more funds to his ministry to enable him tackle the scourge of “Fake News”, hate speech and propagate the achievements of government in the last 7 and a half years.
Lai made the appeal for greater funds to be appropriated to his Ministry when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Information to defend the budget for 2023 on Tuesday.
Lamenting the paucity of funds and its impact on the activities of the Ministry, the Minister described the situation as “very sad”. He said out of the total of N2.5 billion appropriated to the Ministry and all of its agencies for capital projects in 2022, only a paltry N1.7 billion was released representing 41% to undertake 22 different projects.
The Minister further lamented the prospect of having the Capital budget for the Ministry and its entire agencies in 2023 slashed to N869 million.
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This was as the Minister also complained that only the sum of N525 million representing 58% of the Ministry’s allocation was released for overheads in 2022.
But the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Senator, Danladi Sankara told the Minister that the slash in budget is not limited to his Ministry; pointing out that capital votes in the 2022 budget has dropped from N2.5trillion to N1trillion in the budget for 2023.
In response, the Minister said while he was aware paucity of funds was not peculiar to his Ministry; he appealed to the Senate Committee and the Federal Government to increase the purse of the Ministry by granting it special considerations at a time when government is faced with serious challenges.
“If there is any ministry that should adequately funded and not suffer from yearly budget cut is the Information Ministry”.
“We’re going to have a very difficult year and I don’t know how we are going to do it”.
“Yes, while it is true that paucity of funds has affected all government ministries and agencies it is important for government to at a time it is going through challenges rely on its media to put the people’s mind at rest
and ask them not to panic and at a time the government is now swimming th of fake news misinformation”.
Lai cried to the Senate Committee that his Ministry would need the money to tackle a gale of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and hate speech.
He said the latest of such misinformation that needs urgent repair is the US Security Alert on Abuja which according to the Minister has affected the image and economy of the country.
Editor: Omor Bazuaye
