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Ahmed Lawan
The Budget Office of the Federation has been indicted for releasingN19 billion to four unnamed agencies withoutapproval ofthe Ministryof Financethe Senate has revealed.
This is contained in the 2016 Report of the Auditor General of the Federationadopted by the Senate.
According to the AuGF, the Budget Office violated extant financial regulations when it released the N19withoutapproval.
In addition to the indictment, the Senate directedthe Budget Office to retrieve the money from the fourMDAs and return it to the ministry.
The Senate had in October 2022 commenced investigation into the allegedpayment of the sum.
However, during the investigationby the Senate Public Accounts Committee, the Budget Office was unable to present evidence of approval from theService Wide Vote to the fouragencies.
The Budget Office,in its response toa queryby the AuGF, claimed that it had written the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation requesting for details about the four MDAs without response.
TheMatthew Urhoghide-ledSenate committee noted that the BudgetOffice did not present the letter it purported to have written to the Office of the Auditor-General requesting for the said details.
The failure madethe Senate toadopt the report of the committeeand askthat the money be refunded to the treasury.
The query is in the 2016 audit report of the Auditor-General of the Federation which was submitted to Senate for consideration.
The queryreads, “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of theMinister of Finance, some of the payments were made on a purported verbal directive from the Director-General.
“This act is against the Financial Regulation 301 and 302 which state that ‘recurrentexpenditure is paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) and no expenditure may be incurred except on the authority of a warrant issued by the Minister of Finance.
“In view of the above, it is difficult to accept the payment to the MDAs as proper and legitimate charges against the public funds.
“The Director-General should provide evidence of approval from the Minister of Finance for these expenditures or recover the sum of N19 billion from the benefiting MDAs.” (The Nation)
