The Senate Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday described the Service Wide Vote as the biggest fraud in Nigeria.
Service Wide Vote is contingency fund in the national budget under the control of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
In 2021, the Federal Government allocated N758 billion for Service Wide Vote.
Speaking at the confirmation hearing of the Acting Auditor-General of Federation, Aghughu Adolphus, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Matthew Uhroghide (PDP-Edo), said the fund was the biggest fraud because it is not audited.
Urhoghide said: “Service Wide Vote is the biggest fraud in Nigeria.
“It is meant to meet unseen situation.
“Nobody gives account on Service Wide Vote.
“Standing Committees of the Senate do not know any thing about its spending.”
The lawmaker told Aghughu to brief the panel on how he would audit the fund.
He said: “You should tell us how are you going to audit this Service Wide Votes.”
This was even as the Acting Auditor General of Federation told the lawmakers that his office lacks the Constitutional power to audit the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Ports Authority and other big spenders among the government agencies.
The President Muhammadu Buhari nominee, while responding to why the Auditor General has been unable to audit big spenders, said: “For the big spender, it is the constitution that has issue.
“By virtue of 1999 Constitution, we will just provide a list of what we need from them and they will make their choice.
“If they decline to give to us, we have no power to compel them.”
The Acting Auditor General assured the lawmakers of looking into the issue of non-Auditing of Service Wide Votes.
Speaking on the challenges of the Office, Aghughu said the workers of the agency are working under tedious condition as there is no enough staff in to carry out its tasks.
He added that in some states, the agency has only three staff available and as a result of this, most of the works are not carried out by the office.
The nominee solicited for the full autonomy of the office of the Auditor General of the Federation so that it can able to carry out its task effectively, lamenting that lack of fund halted efforts of the agency to acquire some software that will aid their work because it was struck out of the budget.
He however said the agency is currently discussing with some donor agencies in order to acquire the software.
Some of the Senators who spoke during the screen exercise expressed dissatisfaction with the poor funding of the Office of Auditor General of the Federation, which is meant to tackle corruption.
The Chairman of the Committee specifically said the Office of Auditor General has been designed to fail because there is no availability fund to carry out their task.
Urhoghide submitted that the National Assembly will ensure that no agency appears for budget defence without responding to issue raised in the report of Auditor General of the Federation.