The Senate on Tuesday decided to investigate the report of the Auditor-General of the federation on the alleged misappropriation of over N3.3 trillion by some Federal Government agencies in 2014.
The Auditor-General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura, had on Monday uncovered discrepancies of about N3.3 trillion in the remittance of funds by various Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government as well as foreign missions in the 2014 fiscal year.
This was contained in the 2014 Annual Audit Report presented to the National Assembly on Monday by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
Chatting with journalist on Tuesday, the Senate spokesman, Senator Abdulahi Sabi, said: “Since the eighth Senate has chosen to be different and we are in a season and period of change, the matter will be definitely looked into by the relevant committees in the Senate.”
Sao explained the report is not an indictment on the part of the affected agencies but a query which needed to be addressed by the concerned government agencies.
The Senate spokesman said: “Since the eighth Senate has chosen to be different and we are in a season and period of change as we have stated severally since we came on board and for which we came up with our legislative agenda to make us different from the past, because we are in the season and period of change and we want to seriously key in to that.
“Along that line, you could see the courage that we have to make some differences from what has obtained in the past and on this note we have passed reports of some committees like the TSA, which is a classical example.
“Through that exercise, we were able to save the country N7 billion.
“There are similar works that have been done.
“We want to say that since we have chosen to be different, we urge Nigerians to wait and see what we will make out of the investigation.
“Without holding forth for the past assemblies, I want to say that it is not as if they have not been doing anything about the past Audit Reports.
“But perhaps they have not taken their action up to the scale that would have made a huge impact that people want to see.
“If that is what the Auditor-General means, I agree with him.
“The Auditor-General is raising a query.
“It is not an indictment.
“So when he raises his queries, the essence of the Public Accounts Committee is to invite those parties involved in the query and through the instruments of their own work, investigate all the issues by seeking for clarification and at the end of the day, where they have infractions or infringement on certain procedures, they mete out appropriate sanctions as stipulated by extant rules and regulations.
“When there is a process and someone has done one part, until we conclusively finish that process, it will be wrong to accuse anyone of being guilty.
“These are administrative procedures and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has made it clear that we would take oversight functions far more serious than what it used to be in the past.
“If oversight functions are carried out properly, some of these queries that we talk about will begin to reduce because the essence is to see infractions before they happen.
“We as lawmakers will stop it before another institution discovers the anomalies and brings them to our notice.
“These are the powers of the National Assembly through oversight functions.
“We are committed to ensuring that a thorough job is done this time.
“We have demonstrated our capacity to match our words with our actions.
“Wait and see.
“It’s a promise and we have four years to prove that we mean business.”
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