Nat.Assembly approves N.8billion for LOC

The National Asembly in Nigeria has approved the sum of N800 million for organisers of the 14th National Sports Festival,nigeriasports.com can authoritatively reveal.The country's lawmaking body pegged the budget at the above figure after a reportedly painstaking scrutiny. This piece of information was availed nigeriasports.com Saturday by Deji Omotade,the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee[LOC] for the festival tagged,'Abuja 2004'. Omotade disclosed in an exclusive interview that the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory had indeed prepared a budget of over one billion naira for staging the biennial event which was last hosted in Benin City,the Edo State capital. "We had up to N800 million budgetted for this festival.But not until early this week was the budget approved by the National Assembly. "We waited for some time but I thought it was going to be a too expensive wait.So we made alternative arrangement by to our bankers and we our credible enough,they believe us ,they saw the preparations and they were able to give us a lifeline.And that's we started using and we went into action and we are where we are. "We asked for N800 million and the entire money has been appropriated for us,at least by the clean copy of the bill I saw on Friday morning.So I am saying government has done the best we wanted from it." Omotade who is a Permanent Secretary at the FCT ministry acknowledged reports of paucity of funds plaguing the LOC,stating that this was precipitated by lack of enough cash in circulation. "We have appealed to some of our suppliers that they just have to go by the cheque.They collect the cheque,they go and run round to find cash wherever they can to do what they needed to do,"he explained. He disclosed further that the LOC had anagreemant with a marketing outfit,ESM Marketing Company Limited, to raise a minimum of N500 million through the involvement of corporate Nigeria in sponsorship aspect of the festival.
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