Unlike other Federal agencies, the Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority (OGFZA) has set an exemplary record for its capacity to generate internal revenue to meet its staff salaries and overheads with effect from this financial year.
This effort has not gone unnoticed as the Senate Committee on Trade and Investment recently extolled the leadership of OGFZA under Umana Okon Umana for the capacity to raise enough internally generated revenue to take care of its recurrent expenditure.
Senator Sabo Mohammed, chairman of the committee, who was speaking at OGFZA’s 2018 budget session with the committee, told the managing director of OGFZA, Mr Umana Okon Umana, that the committee was highly impressed by OGFZA’s ingenuity to generate enough cash from internal sources to fund the payment of staff salaries and overheads from the 2018 budget cycle.
Mohammed noted that OGFZA’s budget presentation was thorough, detailed and clear, requiring no follow-up questions and explanation. The committee brought the session to a close by asking Umana to take a bow and return to his office.
The committee chairman and Senator Nelson Effiong, a member of the committee who also spoke at the budget session, said OGFZA’s performance was unique and worthy of emulation by other agencies of the federal government.
They contrasted OGFZA’s resourcefulness with the case of other agencies which rely solely on handouts from the federal government to fund both their recurrent and capital expenditure.
Umana, managing director of OGFZA, had formally informed the Federal Ministry of Finance in a 6 December 2017 memo that the Authority could meet its staff salaries and overheads from internally generated revenue, and requested the “Federal Government to suspend the funding of the recurrent expenditure of OGFZA from treasury funds.”
Financial independence that permits self-funding is one of the six goals that OGFZA set for itself under the Umana-led management in its three-year roadmap which became operational at the beginning of last year.
Last year, Umana had written to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, “Following the measures taken by the new management of OGFZA to increase Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), I write to inform the Honourable Minister of Finance that with effect from the 2018 financial year, the Authority will no longer depend on treasury funding to meet her recurrent expenditure requirements (salaries and overheads). The recurrent expenditure of the Authority will be funded with our IGR.”
