{"id":2933,"date":"2022-10-06T18:09:33","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T18:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=2933"},"modified":"2022-10-07T08:18:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T08:18:34","slug":"bill-to-create-support-fund-for-armed-forces-hits-brick-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/bill-to-create-support-fund-for-armed-forces-hits-brick-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill  to Create Support Fund for Armed Forces Hits Brick Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Senate on Wednesday, 28<sup>th<\/sup> September 2022, raised concern over the Armed Forces Support Fund (Establishment) Bill sent to it for concurrence by the House of Representatives. Some Senators who spoke on the bill, opposed the proposed means of funding, stating that monies to be appropriated to the Armed Forces through the Support Fund were enormous and should be reviewed. This is also in the light of the fact that the military is already highly funded through budgetary allocations. The Senate went on to refer the report on the bill to its Committee on Defence for further legislative scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The House\nof Representatives had earlier passed the bill, to provide special financial\nsupport for revamping of the Nigerian Armed Forces with the provision of\nregular training for Armed Forces personnel and the provision of modern\nsecurity and defence equipment. The bill establishes a Nigerian Armed Forces\nSupport Fund which is aimed at improving the skills of personnel of the Armed\nForces to enhance their efficiency in the fight against insurgency and all\nexternal aggressions against the Nigerian State. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nSupport Fund established by the bill will be financed by: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>An amount\nconstituting 1% of the total money accruing to the Federation Account;<\/li><li>0.5% of profit made from\ninvestment of the National Sovereign Wealth Fund (NSWF) by the Nigerian\nSovereign Investment Authority (NSIA);<\/li><li>An amount\nconstituting 1% of Value Added Tax (VAT) remitted to the Consolidated\nRevenue Fund (CRF);<\/li><li>Any take-off grant\nand special intervention fund as may be&nbsp;\nprovided by the Federal Government, States and Local Governments of\nthe&nbsp; Federation;<\/li><li>An amount constituting\n1%\nof the air ticket contract, charter and cargo sales charge to be collected by\nthe airlines and paid over to the Support Fund;<\/li><li>Aids, grant and\nall assistance from international agencies, non-governmental organisations and the\nprivate sectors; and<\/li><li>Money derived from\ninvestments made by the Support Fund.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These monies shall be\ncollected and remitted by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and\nappropriated by the National Assembly. The fund shall be utilised to purchase modern\nmilitary equipment and machineries for the Nigerian Armed Forces and provide &nbsp;continuous training and acquisition of\nknowledge and skills by personnel of the Nigerian Armed Forces all over the\nworld, for proficiency in use of modern machineries. In addition, the bill\nmakes financial provisions for the day-to-day administration of the Support\nFund through annual budgetary allocations appropriated by the National\nAssembly, take-off grants and other monies to be made available to the Support\nFund. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bill also establishes a\nNigerian Armed Forces Support Fund Management Board that will have general\ncontrol of the Support Fund and investment of monies that accrue to the Fund. This\nincludes approving disbursement of monies from the Fund to finance relevant\nprojects and activities under the bill, as well as briefing the National\nAssembly on the activities, programmes and progress of the Support Fund on a\nquarterly basis. The Management Board comprises the President, who will be the\nChairman of the Board, all military service chiefs, the National Security\nAdviser and other members from relevant government agencies and labour unions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bill establishes an\nImplementation Committee for the Support Fund, comprising the military service\nchiefs, the Finance Minister and five other members appointed by the Board. The\nChief of Defence Staff will be the Chairman of the Committee. It shall be\nresponsible for implementing projects approved by the Management Board. Also,\nthe Support Fund shall have an Executive Secretary appointed by the President\nand responsible for the day-to-day running of the Fund, as well as working with\nthe Implementation Committee . <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing\ninsecurity in recent time manifested in the form of kidnapping, banditry and\nterrorism have drawn questions about the efficiency of the Nigerian military,\nespecially with the huge amounts of money appropriated in the last few years\nfor security agencies to be better equipped to tackle the insecurity. However,\nit appears that what is indeed lacking is the political will to decisively deal\nwith insurgency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Accountability\nis also a major issue with regard to established funds and in general, in\nrelation monies appropriated to various agencies of government by the National\nAssembly and the revenue generated by these agencies. The impunity with which\npublic funds are misappropriated compounded by the fact that in most cases, no\none is held accountable, has increased reservation among the citizenry for\nestablishments such as this. In addition, the bill\u2019s provision on cessation of\noffice for the Management Board, which provides that the Chairman of the Board may\nbe removed by the President needs to be revisited. This is impracticable since\nthe President is the Chairman of the Board. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate on Wednesday, 28th September 2022, raised concern over the Armed Forces Support Fund (Establishment) Bill sent to it for concurrence by the House of Representatives. Some Senators who spoke on the bill, opposed the proposed means of funding, stating that monies to be appropriated to the Armed Forces through the Support Fund were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2944,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions\/2944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}