Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, the minister of women’s affairs, has bemoaned the lack of funding in her ministry and said that she will speak with Wale Edun, the minister of finance and coordination of the economy, to ask for assistance in paying some contractors who completed projects for her ministry.
“There is no money in the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs. Most of the things I do, I source for money. We are underfunded. We are owing,” Kennedy-Ohanenye stated on Monday’s Politics Today show on Channels Television.
“The contractors we certified ready for payment are only four/five; they are the ones that have completion certificates. Remember, you have a completion period of which if you don’t complete this project, it could either be revoked or the money to pay you may probably be exhausted.
“The Perm Sec has called for a committee to use what they call PICA (Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit) which is where we will write to the finance (ministry) to assist us pay these liabilities because we can’t pay. We don’t have money.
“Or we move some of them to ongoing projects in 2024. Any of them that fall within that, they (contractors) will get paid. I am serious about this. I wouldn’t want people to do work and be suffering but my hands were tied; I couldn’t do much because of lack of funds.”
Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Women Affairs and Social Development engaged in a free-for-all last Tuesday over accusations of corruption made against Kennedy-Ohanenye’s ministry.
A House Committee led by Kafilat Ogbara had initiated an inquiry into the purported misappropriation of ₦1.5 billion intended for the remuneration of contractors under the women’s affairs ministry.
The minister was called before the committee about accusations made in her ministry following a petition filed by certain contractors who claimed they had not been paid for projects they had completed on behalf of the ministry.