The Senate Committee on Public Account has queried the Ministry of Finance over failure to account for N2.8 billion service wide vote collected from the Federation Account.
It was learnt that the N2.8 billion was to take care of estacodes and other allowances for representatives of the Federal Government in internationally-organized annual board meetings, conferences and workshops, including contribution to Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Of this amount, payment vouchers were raised for the sum of N113,558,372.85, leaving the sum of N2,772,214,120.42 unaccounted for.
The Senate Committee, chaired by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, relied on the 2018 report of the Auditor General of the Federation to query the unaccounted expenditures.
The Chairman of the Committee, who expressed dissatisfaction with the abuse of service wide vote by government agencies, vowed to investigate the management of service wide vote by agencies in the 2021 budget.
The query reads: “Financial Regulation 601 states, ‘All payment entries in the cash book/accounts shall be vouched for on one of the prescribed treasury forms. Vouchers shall be made out in favour of the person or persons to whom the money is actually due. Under no circumstances shall a cheque be raised, or cash paid for services for which a voucher has not been raised.’
“During our audit, it was observed the sum of N2,885,772,493.27 was released to the Federal Ministry of Finance from the Service Wide Vote.
“This was to take care of estacodes and other allowances for representing the Federal Government in internationally organized annual board meetings, conferences and workshops including contribution to Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
“Of this amount, Payment vouchers were raised for the sum of N113,558,372.85 leaving the sum of N2,772,214,120.42 unaccounted for.
“This infraction was due to the failure of the Permanent Secretary to seek approval from the appropriate authorities to incur the above expenditure which is seemingly unaccounted for.
“The Ministry may carry out such unauthorized or unapproved expenditure that may lead to diversion of public funds for other purposes.
“It may also lead to mismanagement and underutilization of public funds.”
But the Permanent Secretary of Finance, Aliyu Ahmed, told the Committee that he was not with response to the query at the moment, pleading to be given another time to appear.
The Committee Chairman, however, ordered the Permanent Secretary to appear on Tuesday to respond to the query before the lawmakers.
Urhoghide, speaking further, said that it was only the Public Account Committee that looks into the service wide vote, insisting that somebody must account for how the money was spent.
He said: “It is only Public Account that looks at the service wide vote.
“What of this disbursement of service wide vote?
“Somebody must account for it this year.
“You must account for it.”
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