Written by Jacob Segun Olatunji and Kolawole Daniel, Abuja
Monday, 17 October 2011
OVER 300 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government have refused to render their annual accounts in the last 12 years, as stipulated by the constitution, the Auditor General of the Federation, Mr Samuel Ukura, has disclosed.
Consequently, several billions of naira accruable to the Federal Government have not been accounted for by the MDAs involved.
This revelation came to light, at the weekend, when the Auditor General of the Federation and the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Jonah Otunla, appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Public Account, led by Honourable Solomon Adeola.
To this end, the committee has directed the Auditor General of the Federation to write to the affected MDAs to submit their audited accounts from 1999-2009 to his office within one week and such reports must reach the committee immediately.
The committee chairman equally told the Auditor General that the Federal Government had empowered his office adequately to carry out its statutory function, stressing that, “the constitution is very clear, the Auditor General’s office is more powerful than the EFCC and ICPC. If the Auditor General’s office had done a thorough job, the anti-corruption agencies will have nothing to do again.”
The chairman added that from its committee’s investigations, there were projects of over N10 billion abandoned across the country after which contractors were paid and job not done.
The committee chairman said: “This issue of revenue generation and remittances must be taken very seriously because of the need to make funds available to government treasury for development purposes, particularly at this moment that the 2012 budget is being prepared. So we need the list fast. It is also too bad that these revenue generating agencies which had refused to remit funds to the treasury are also among the agencies that are defaulting in submitting audit reports to the office of the Auditor-General. We will not allow this to continue.”
On his part, the Auditor General, however, disclosed that there were no acceptable structures in place to monitor revenues generated by government agencies, stressing that, “most of the time, those we audit do not take us seriously; they tell us to our faces that our report won’t change things; that we may go ahead to write whatever report we can write about them but it would not affect them because the National Assembly has not been acting on audit reports.”
He added that, “the problem is further compounded by the fact that we have no powers to sanction those agencies who failed to transmit their audit reports to us.”
Some of the affected government agencies and commissions include Abuja Environmental Protection Board (accounts not received from inception); Abuja Investment Company Limited (accounts not received from inception); Bank of Industry; Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS); Fiscal Responsibilities Commission, Abuja; Investment and Securities Tribunal and National Assembly Service Commission.
Others are National Board for Education Research, Minna; National Commission for Refugees, Abuja; National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA); National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA); National Examination Council (NECO); National Information Technology; Development Agency; National Judicial Institute, National Planning Commission; National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency; National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (accounts not received from inception), among others.
The Accountant General, Mr Otunla, while addressing the committee on the same issue said: “Those agencies being funded by government could be sanctioned for not submitting their records of their expenditure, because we can simply refuse to release their allocations to them until they comply; but those agencies not funded by government cannot be sanctioned by us at all.”
CULLED FROM TRIBUNE NIGERIA
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