The Senate has directed 59 Federal Government agencies including the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to refund over N300bn funds allegedly misappropriated by them to the federation account.
This follows the annual report of the Auditor General for the Federation on the accounts of the federation for the year ended 31st December, 2015 and a report of the Senate Committee on public accounts.
The Senate issued a 60 day ultimatum for all monies illegally spent by the affected agencies between 2013 – 2015, to be recovered and remitted into the nation’s treasury.
The committee chairman, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, said of the over 600 MDAs in the country, 114 were queried in the 2015 audit report and 59 of them had their queries sustained after the probe.
According to him, the panel observed the incessant violation of extant rules by the agencies.
The Senate, in one of its adopted recommendations to the executive arm of government, noted that there was outstanding collection from solid minerals (N12.14bn) not remitted to the Federation Account, but kept in an account maintained by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in contravention of the provisions of Section 162(1) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
The Senate also faulted the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for under remitting N3.88tn revenue and demanded the sanctioning of accounting officers of MDAs in accordance with the provision of Rule 3124 of Financial Regulations, on the issue of unretired advances involving 39 MDAs to the tune of N2.3bn.
It also gave the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, a deadline of 90 days to identify and sanction officers responsible for mismanagement of public funds to the tune of N54.15bn ($274.28m) as exchange loss on external loans and another 90 days to to set in motion the process for the recovery of internal loans made from other funds which stood at N390.29bn and to be paid back into the Special Funds Accounts.
