The upper chamber of the National Assembly has kickstart efforts to recover about N978 billion received from Service Wide Votes (SWV) between 2017- 2021.
To this end, the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, has commenced investigation on the Office of Accountant General of the Federation.
The N978 billion received from Service Wide Votes consist of both capital and recurrent expenditures, which were disbursed to the Ministries, Department and Agencies.
Speaking at the opening of the investigative hearing, the Chairman of Senate Public Accounts Committee, Senator Mathew Urhoghide observed that there are some releases from Service Wide Votes (SWV) which there are no Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) and this elicited suspicious of the Committee, adding it was only memos provided to back the releases.
Not satisfied with the submission of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, the Committee Chairman said that the OAGF needs to give the explanation to the committee bit by bit of the expenditures for proper understanding because the figures are enormous and response to the committee is not satisfactory.
He said: “From what I have seen, we may need time so that we can analyse the expenditure one by one, these figures are enormous and the response is not satisfactory.”
However, the Office of Accountant General of the Federation, represented by Director of Fund, Sabo Mohammed told the committee to give them more time to respond to the issues raised by the Lawmakers.
He said: “It will take some time, we should do it systematically to save our time and your time, this is a matter of going back and do them one after the other .
” We have responded to some, we will still go back and separate our own from that of MDAs. We have found out that many of the figures may not correct.”
The Chairman therefore, asked the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation to go back and put the documents together and appear on Thursday for further consideration
