The Senate has uncovered how the Budget Office of Federation (BOF), paid N28 billion excess from 2015 budget to some unnamed government agencies.
The Senate Public Accounts Committee relied on 2016 Auditor General Report to uncover the excess payment.
However, the Budget Office in a written response, which was obtained by our correspondent, says, ” The details of the MDAs under reference have not been provided to enable us respond appropriately.”
Our correspondent observed the query has been issued to the Budget Office for four years.
The meeting scheduled by the Senator Uroghide-led Committee to respond to the query raised by the Auditor General was not attended by officials of the Budget Office.
The query reads, “The sum of N28,880,533,107.00 (Twenty-eight billion, eight hundred and eighty million, five hundred and thirty-three thousand, one hundred and seven naira) was paid to some MDAs as advance payment from their approved budgets in 2015.
“There was no evidence to show that these advances were recovered from the subsequent payments made to these MDAs, resulting in excess releases to the benefiting MDAs, above their appropriated amounts. Furthermore, there was no evidence of any supplementary budgetary allocation from the National Assembly nor Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation
“The Director-General was requested to recover these advances from the benefiting MDAs from subsequent payments due to them and show evidence of supplementary approval from the National Assembly for the sum of N28,880,533,107.00 released as advances. Evidence of compliance should be furnished for verification.”