The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee probing the misappropriation of COVID-19 intervention funds by ministries, departments and agencies has uncovered several irregularities in the presentations made by some health institutions across the country.
Chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam (Osun, PDP) who revealed this on Sunday, said some of the alleged infractions were capable of earning the accounting officers jail terms or lose their jobs.
Following these findings, therefore, the committee rejected their presentations, describing them as cooked up even as it directed them to reappear with relevant documents to substantiate their claims.
The affected health institutions are the Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Bauchi State; Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Calabar, Cross River State; Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital, Yola formerly known as Federal Medical Centre, Yola, Adamawa State and the National Orthopedic Hospital, Dala-Kano, Kano State.
The committee said it found that the Medical Director of the Federal Medical Centre, Azare who got N949.23m made a presentation that had a shortfall of N27m, claiming the said amount was trapped in the Treasury Single Account.
The Bamidele-led committee urged the CMD to either produce the relevant documents to back up his claim or refund the N27 million unfailingly.
Bamidele, representing Ede North/Ede North/Egbedore/Ejigbo Federal Constituency, Osun State, said the Treasury Single Account (TSA) houses all accounts, adding that there was no way of knowing which particular one it was.
