The Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris was on Tuesday asked by the House of Representatives to explain some extra-budgetary expenditure worth over N1.819 trillion incurred by the federal government in the 2014 fiscal year.
Not satisfied by the response provided by the AGF to various audit queries issued by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation, the lawmakers rejected the Accountant General’s response which failed to address various concerns raised in the audit queries.
A breakdown of the extra-budgetary expenditure indicate that N54 billion was borrowed by the government for staff of PHCN in 2014 without proper disclosure of where the money was taken from and N745.4 billion payment allegedly approved by former President Goodluck Jonathan from the Natural Resources Fund account.
The money also included N594.3 billion loan withdrawn from the Stabilisation Fund which belonged to the three tiers of government, N73.5 billion paid in 2014, out of which N36.4 billion was released to the National Security Adviser (NSA) for rehabilitation and construction of dam; N31.3 billion paid to an account where an unnamed political appointee is a signatory and additional sum of N2.8 billion paid for purchase of hand sanitizers.
Similarly, the Auditor General queried the Accountant general’s office over the sum of N200.9 billion deducted from Federal Government’s share of the Federation Account, out of the total sum of N797.9 billion reported in the 2014 financial statement, showing the variance of N52.7 billion.
They requested for details of the 10% cocoa levy account which has been dormant for a long time and requested the Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Hameed Ali to furnish them detail of collections into the account and why it is dormant as well Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele over the Police Reward Fund which was dormant after 2012.
The House is also insisting that the Auditor General furnish it with the source of the N54 billion borrowed fund for staff of PHCN in 2014 and why his office failed to remit closing balance from the IPPIS account to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation for the year ending December 31, 2014.
The House Committee on Public Accounts directed the Accountant General of the Federation to provide detailed information on the source of N54 billion borrowed in 2014 by the government for payment of pension for staff of the defunct PHCN.
In hi audit query, the Auditor General of the Federation said the source of the borrowed fund was not disclosed by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
Also, the House said it was not satisfied by the explanation of the Accountant General that the closing balance that was not returned to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation were not government money, but money belong to other agencies such as unions and taxes meant for other states.
The Accountant General had told the Committee that the non disclosure of the source of the borrowed fund was.an oversight, assuring that his office will furnish the house the details of the fund.
He said very often, government borrows from different sources and from different accounts to pay back later when certain exigencies occur.
He said “For example, I know that when the issue ASUU occurred in the past and the government wanted to pay the outstanding allowances, they went and borrowed money from TETFUND. I am not saying the N54 billion was borrowed from Pension money. But I want to assure the parliament that we will provide the source of that money and other information required from us.”
He explained that the closing balance was not remitted to the CRF because “it is third party money deducted from source such as union dues and taxes meant for states. That money does not belong to the federal government and that is why it was not remitted to the CRF so that we will not run into trouble when it is time to pay”
Also, the Accountant General told the Committee that the delay in the passage of the national budget and extension of the capital budget into the following year has made it impossible for his office to prepare the financial statement of the government for audit as required by law.
He denied any act of sabotage on the part of his office saying “we are for the Federation and cannot sabotage the Federation. We are doing our best to ensure things are done normally”.
He also said that the delay in getting transcript of account from the Ministries, Department and Agencies of government occasioned by attitude of staff from the MDAs or outright lack of capacity is also partly responsible for the delay in preparing government annual statement of accounts.
He stressed that “if there is no rendition of account from the MDAs, there is no way the account can be prepared. Sometimes, we threaten to with hold allocation to them before they send in their transcript and sometimes, we have to send our staff to assist them. But going forward, we are deploying ICT which will now be used”.
He however explained that his office was working on a draft law that will amend the existing law stating specific period for the submission of annual financial statement to the Auditor General, adding that the draft law will soon be submitted to the National Assembly.
