Senate demands refund of N19bn paid to MDAs without finance minister’s approval

The Senate has demanded the refund of the N19 billion the Budget Office transferred to four Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) without the Ministry of Finance’s approval.

The Auditor General of the Federation had in a memo in 2016 revealed that the Budget Office could not identify the four MDAs that benefited from the payment.

The disbursement, according to the AugF, was also made without approval from the then Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning.

The memo read: “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the Honorable Minister of Finance, some of the payments were made on a purported verbal directive from the Director-General.

Read also:NNPC failed to account for N102bn crude oil lifted —Senate

“This act is against the financial Regulation 301 and 302 which state that ‘recurrent expenditure is paid from the CRF and no expenditure may be incurred except on the authority of a warrant issued by the Minister of Finance.”

“Given the above, it is difficult to accept the payment to the MDAs as proper and legitimate charges against the public funds.

“The Director General should provide evidence of approval from the Minister of Finance for these expenditures or recover the sum of N19bn from the benefiting MDAs.”

However, at a plenary on Monday, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Mathew Urhoghide, said the Budget Office had in a letter requested details of the payment from the office of the AuGF.

However, following a demand by the Senate that the Budget Office should provide the letter, it failed to present the same to the upper chamber despite claiming in its response to the query that it wrote a letter to the AuGF.

Following the failure of the Budget Office to present the requested letter to back its response, the committee demanded that the N19 billion should be returned to the federation account and this was adopted by the Senate at the plenary.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now