The National Assembly Joint Committee on Aviation, on Wednesday, cautioned the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, over the refusal of some agencies under his Ministry to honour invitations from the apex Assembly.

This was as the Minister presented financial estimates totalling N71,123,368,096, for the 2025 fiscal year.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Abdulfatai Buhari (Oyo North) gave the warning when the Minister appeared before the joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, to present the Ministry?s 2025 budget proposal.

Senator Buhari lamented that it was unfair for a government agency to ignore invitations from the lawmakers who were elected by the citizens across the country to represent them at the federal level.

The visibly aggrieved lawmaker disclosed that some agencies of the Ministry had severally turned down invitations from both Chambers, threatening that the legislative arm has the power to invite or summon any agency for an to interface.

?Now, Honourable Minister, before I invite you to present the 2025 budget, we want to make an appeal to you about your Agencies. We don?t want a situation where we?ll be calling them and they won?t come.

?We have the power to invite and to summon. It?s always not nice when you summon. So we want to appeal to you to appeal to your people that whenever they see a letter from the National Assembly they have to honour it.

?Some of your Agencies will receive letters and even phone calls from our clerks, they don?t even have the courtesy to return the calls. It?s unfair!? he lamented.

The 2025 budget, the Minister presented a budget proposal, totalling N71,123,368,096. The breakdown of the budget shows that N69,220,036,250 is for capital projects; Personnel: N1,157,589,143; and Overhead: N745,742,676.

Meanwhile, the budget proposal was dropped by the Committee, thereby directing the Minister to provide documents of the ongoing projects as being captured in the year?s budget.

The documents are to be submitted to the Joint Committee in the next one week, for thorough consideration and further legislative action. (New Telegraph)

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