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.”
Source
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