Senate Indicts Budget Office for Releasing N19b to 4 MDAs Without Approval

The Senate has indicted the Budget Office of the Federation for giving approval of N19 billion to four Ministries, Departments and Agencies without the approval of the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, asking for refund from the four unnamed MDAs.

The Senate had last year commenced investigation into alleged illegal payment of N19 billion to the four MDAs.

After investigation by the Senate Public Accounts Committee, the Budget Office was unable to present evidence of approval from Ministry of Finance before the payment of the N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote to the four unnamed federal agencies.

The Budget Office of the Federation in its response to the query claimed that it had written the office of the Auditor General of the Federation requesting for details for the four MDAs without response.

But the Committee, chaired by Senator Mathew Uhroghide, 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 the Budget Office to present approval for the payment of the fund, the Senate adopted the report of the Senate Public Accounts Committee on the matter, asking for a refund of the N19 billion to the nation’s purse.

The query was in the 2016 report of the Auditor General of the Federation, which was submitted to the Senate for consideration.

The query by the Auditor General reads: “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the Honorable 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 states 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 N19 billion from the benefiting MDAs.”