Sometimes I spend a month without electricity in my office, says minister

Aisha Alhassan, minister of women affairs, says sometimes she stays in her office for a month without electricity.

Alhassan said this on Tuesday when she appeared before house of representatives committee on women affairs and social development for the defence of her ministry’s budget.

She blamed consistent blackout for the delay in submitting the documents required for her ministry’s budget defence.

“The challenge we had is that, sometimes at the secretariat, we stay for three, four, five weeks without light; right now, this is the third week that we have stayed without light,” Alhassan said.

“The permanent secretary and I had to raise money personally to buy diesel at the Women Centre to do it. At the time, because there was no light we couldn’t retrieve data from the desktop computers.

“Unfortunately, we did not have the data in flash drives, so it was partly our fault and partly not ours. But all I can say is that, honourable chairman, we sincerely apologise. We are very sorry for that and it will not repeat itself.”

On her part, Stella Uchenna, chairperson of the committee, expressed her displeasure at the late submission of the documents.

She said there was need for ministries, departments and agencies (MDA’s) to cooperate with the national assembly.

The legislator explained that early submission of documents would have given the committee time to understudy them before budget defence.

“On January 30, we requested that you send to us the budget implementation of 2016, the document didn’t reach us. Then on February 9, we wrote a reminder and still we did not get a reply,” Uchenna said.

“And because we were short of time, we now wrote requesting for the budget performance for 2016 and the proposal for 2017, and we got the centre and the ministry yesterday.”