Enugu Assembly lambasts commissioner, agency boss, summons 16 MDA heads

Enugu State House of Assembly has again summoned the Commissioner for Lands and Urban Development, Victor Nnam, and the Chairman of Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, Josef Onoh.

The two were summoned for refusing to honour an invitation by the House Special Ad hoc Committee investigating allegations of extortion and multiple levies in Enugu Urban areas.

The summons was issued during Thursday’s plenary. describing their disdain for the special committee as unacceptable and an insult to the assembly.

Both government officials had refused to honour three previous invitations on the issue.

Speaker of the House, Uchenna Ubosi, directed Clerk of the House to re-invite the commissioner to appear before the Committee of Whole on Tuesday, October 12, 2021.

Ubosi said, because of the disdain with which the commissioner treated committee members, “We are not in a hurry; we can spend the whole day with him.  We can even give him water to drink to make sure that we get what we want from him.”

In the same vein, defiant Onoh was also summoned to appear before the House, come next Thursday, October 14, 2021.

While Nnam was reticent, Onoh accused the House Committee of having the tendency to extort money from him in the name of oversight function, hence he declined their invitation.

In a related development, the House, acting on the report of its Committee on Public Accounts and Anti-Corruption, as presented by its chairman, Chinedu Nwamba on the annual accounts of the Government of Enugu State for the years ended 31st December, 2018 and 2019 respectively, summoned 16 Ministries, Departments and Agencies that have not submitted their audited accounts to appear before it to explain why they have not done so.

Some of the 16 MDAs have not submitted their audited accounts since 1991 but have been receiving their statutory allocations.

(The PUNCH)