The House of Representatives’ Public Accounts Committee has set up a six-man panel to further investigate an alleged disbursement of N1.47 billion loan to unspecified beneficiaries by the Nigeria Directorate of Employment (NDE).

The resolution followed the consideration of a query by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation in 2011, requesting NDE to give account of how the N1.47 billion was disbursed to some Nigerians under its skill acquisition scheme, since inception.

The Sub-Committee, headed by the Committee Deputy Chairman, Hon. Ibrahim Baba, and which has Hon. Legor Idagbor, Lawal Shuaibu, Sunday Adepoju, Olusegun Kehinde and Daniel Kolawole as members, is to investigate the loan disbursement and establish particulars of alleged beneficiaries.

In the query, the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation had expressed dissatisfaction that out of the N1.4 billion disbursed, only N289.9 million was recovered so far, leaving an outstanding of N1.18 billion with the agency’s leadership unable to account for the whereabouts of the balance.

In response to a directive issued by the Public Accounts Committee on July 10, 2017, the Director-General of NDE, Mr Nasiru Mohammed furnished the committee with list of the beneficiaries and amount granted to each of them.

Others are copies of loan agreement and report of recoveries made from 1987 to 2010 and the copies of the audited accounts of the agency from 1997 to 2015.

He, however, told the lawmakers that the loan was disbursed by previous administrations of the agency.

However, while setting up the panel, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Hon. Kingsley Chinda (Rivers-PDP) urged the NDE to cooperate with the sub-committee in carrying out the task. (NAN)

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