Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, the Minister of Women Affairs, stated on Monday, July 15, that the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs is underfunded and is owing debts.
She explained that she has to source money to undertake most of the things she does.
Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye revealed this while speaking during an appearance on Channels Television regarding her clash with members of the House of Representatives Committee on Women Affairs and Social Development over corruption allegations levelled against her ministry.
The Minister explained that there were several hanging liabilities when she took over the Ministry, and ₦1.5bn was used to clear some of the confirmed liabilities of contractors who had completed their projects.
She also accused the lawmakers who are members of the House of Representatives Committee on Women Affairs and Social Development of failing to allow her to talk during the hearing to which she was invited.
She added that due to the paucity of funds in her Ministry, she would approach the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, to seek support in paying some contractors who executed projects for her ministry and her yet to be paid.
“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 said during the programme.
“The ones (contractors) we certified ready for payment are only four (or) 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 either 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 seriously on 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.
“The ₦1.5bn, before it came, they were owing double of that, and they started paying people that gradually.
“Some of them (contracts) were awarded in March, monies for those contracts were released in May (2023) and I came in in August (2023). When I came in, I heard about the contracts; I checked some of them, and a lot of them were not done till date. Only about four files were cleared. Not only that, the ministry had a lot of liabilities due to underfundedness.
“By the October time when they brought in the ₦1.5bn while I was there, they used it to start clearing their backlog.”
