Senate committee advises FERMA MD to resign

The Senate Committee on Public Accounts has advised the Managing Director of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, Gabriel Amuchi, to resign if he cannot explain the agency’s financial operations.
The advice followed the refusal of Amuchi to appear before the Public Accounts Committee over summons to explain the agency’s financial operations in Abuja on Tuesday.
The Director, Finance and Accounts, Taiwo Oladipo, appeared before the committee on behalf of the FERMA managing director.
The committee condemned the behaviour of the FERMA boss for failure to appear before it in spite of the fact that two previous invitations were sent him to enable him present vital information regarding the agency’s financial operations.
The Committee Chairman, Senator Ahmed Lawal, said the agency only submitted some of the financial documents on May 12, after refusal to submit same on April 29 and May 2.
Lawal explained that the decision to invite him to appear before the committee became imperative in the light of its findings while on an oversight visit to the agency on April 10.
He said that FERMA had up till date refused to provide a response to the queries raised by the committee during its oversight visit to the agency.
He advised the managing director to resign if he was unable to provide the information.
Lawal said: “We asked for certain important and vital information in addition to advising FERMA to streamline its financial operations in accordance to set guidelines.
“You failed to respond to the queries raised during the committee’s oversight visit.
“You were expected to make the documents available on April 29.
“Your MD did not find it necessary to send any documents to the committee.
“Another letter was forwarded on April 29 reminding you to make submissions on May 2, but you submitted only yesterday (May 12).
“We expect that public officers will take us seriously as well.
“Any public officer who thinks he is too big to comply should leave office.
“This committee takes exception to this.
“If this is what he wants, he should resign from that office and we have very competent hands that will have respect for public office and our democratic structures.”
Lawal emphasised that the refusal of the FERMA MD to appear before the committee would not stop it from going ahead with the investigations.
The committee subsequently directed Amuchi to appear before it on May 20 and failure to do so would attract a written report to the Senate in plenary for further legislative sanctions.
Lawal added: “If the MD fails to appear on Tuesday next week, we are definitely going to invoke legislative sanctions.
“Because that would have been the highest level of disrespect to this committee and the National Assembly.
“This is not going to define the end of this investigation and if it means the MD cannot defend himself, then we will present a report to the Senate in plenary.”
The committee had requested that the FERMA MD provide it with the details of financial control and operations, names and addresses of banks operated by FERMA.
It also requested for the approval to operate accounts with commercial banks and bank statements, as well as deductions of taxes and evidence of remittances to the federal treasury.
The other documents being requested for include details of accounting and audit manuals in use in FERMA, detailed information on Internally Generated Revenue.
The committee is also asking for evidence of FERMA’s response to the query issued by the Accountant-General of the Federation over expenditure in 2011.