By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The Nigerian Senate has accused the Budget Office of the Federation, a department under the Federal Ministry of Finance of illegally approving the sum of N19 billion ($41,274,000) to four Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
The Senate says the Budget Office acted illegally by not seeking the approval of the Minister of Finance.
Nigeria’s upper legislative house thus seeks immediate refund of the said sum to the Federation Account from the four unnamed MDAs and the Budget Office that granted the approval.
The Senate Committee on Public Accounts, which has as Chairman, Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP, Edo South) had uncovered this following a probe into alleged illegal payment of N19 billion to four unnamed MDAs by the Budget Office launched in October.
The Budget Office was unable to present evidence of approval from the Ministry of Finance before payment of N19 billion from Service Wide Vote to the four unnamed federal agencies, the investigation revealed.
The Budget Office of the Federation in its response claimed that it had written the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation requesting for details for the four MDAs but did not get a reply.
In his remarks, Senator Urhoghide noted that the Budget Office did not present the letter it claimed to have written to the office of the Auditor-General requesting for details.
Due to failure of Budget Office to present approval for the payment of N19 billion to the four MDAs, the Senate adopted the report of Senate Public Accounts Committee on the matter asking for refund of the said amount to Nation’s purse.
A query in the 2016 report of Auditor-General of the Federation was submitted to Senate for consideration last week.
The query by the Auditor-General read: “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the Minister of Finance.
“Some of the payments were made on a purported verbal directives from the Director-General.
“This act is against the Financial Regulation 301 and 302 which state that ‘recurrent expenditure is paid from the 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 N19bn from the benefiting MDAs.”
