ABUJA, - The absence of Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, at a scheduled 2012 budget defence stalled the exercise on Tuesday in the Senate.
The Senate Committee on Gas Resources had invited the minister to appear before it to defend her 2012 budget proposal for the gas sector.
But Alison-Madueke’s failure to honour the invitation infuriated members of the committee prompting Chairman of the Committee, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, to make some scatting comments about the way and manner the minister treated the committee.
Nwaogu was particularly furious that Alison-Madueke claimed to have traveled to Switzerland when actually she was in the country.
She said, “We take exception to the way her inability to appear before this committee was conveyed. She is in the country, she did not travel to Switzerland.
“All we are trying to do is to peruse the draft budget and the 2011 budget performance. The minister is not in Switzerland as we speak. We want to express our displeasure and dismay over the development.”
The Committee Chairman who warned that “the committee will not condone any attempt to look down on this exercise” threatened to conduct the budget defence without input from the minister.
“I want this message to get to the minister because “we will not take it” she warned.
The budget proposal, she said, contained important issues that required the presence of the minister “especially as it concerns whether we are paying lip service to the issue of gas development or not.”
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