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Minister of Environment, Malam Balarabe Abbas-Lawal
The Federal Ministry of Environment and its agencies have appealed to the House of Representatives to increase their budgetary allocations for the 2025 fiscal year.
This request was made during a budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Environment on Thursday.
The ministry and its agencies—comprising the National Park Service, Environmental Health Council of Nigeria, the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, and the Forest Research Institute of Nigeria—reviewed their 2024 performance and outlined projections for 2025.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Mahmud Kambari, highlighted the ministry’s achievements while stressing that inadequate funding remains a significant challenge.
The Conservator-General of the National Park Service, Ibrahim Goni, reported 2024 expenditures, including N4.33bn for personnel, N1.03bn for overheads, and N1.95bn for capital projects, with N633.46m disbursed and utilised.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives Committee on Environment expressed dissatisfaction over the lack of adequate funding for the Environmental Health Council of Nigeria, which they said hampers its ability to prevent disease outbreaks in the country.
The committee, chaired by Julius Pondi, who represents Burutu Federal Constituency in Delta State, criticised the hardships faced by EHCN staff, including a complete lack of salaries in 2014. Pondi questioned why the Budget Office of the Federation excluded the agency from the budget, despite the Federal Executive Council reinstating it.
The committee listened to EHCN’s Executive Director, Yakubu Mohammed, who detailed the agency’s challenges and sought their intervention. He disclosed that the council had been excluded from budgetary allocations due to a 2024 government policy discontinuing funding for regulatory health bodies. However, this policy was later reversed following extensive engagements with the Budget Office and the Minister of Health.
Mohammed emphasised the council’s role in managing health emergencies, including curbing the Lassa fever epidemic across 21 states and addressing the Maiduguri flood disaster in 2024, for which the Borno State Government commended the agency.
The EHCN boss requested approval for N1.1bn for capital expenditure, N264m for overheads, and N1.7bn for personnel costs in the 2025 budget estimates.
Pondi assured Mohammed of the committee’s support and promised to recommend the agency’s reintegration into the budget. “We sympathise with you but are unhappy about this situation. Every agency under our oversight deserves fair and adequate access to funding,” Pondi said.
