Senate to probe Finance Ministry over N2.77bn service-wide vote

The Senate on Sunday launched an inquest into dealings in the Finance Ministry over its failure to account for N2.77billion released from the service-wide vote.

The inquest launched by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts was predicated on the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) report which declared that the ministry received N2,885,772,493.27 in 2018 to take care of estacodes and other allowances of Federal Government’s officials taking part in conferences, and workshops including contribution to Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

OAuGF said out of the amount, payment vouchers were raised for the sum of N113,558,372 leaving the sum of N2,772,214,120 unaccounted for.

Read also: Reps, Finance Ministry bicker over N2.8bn payment to OPEC in 2017

This, according to OAuGF was contrary to the Financial Regulation 601 which states that all payment entries in the cash book/accounts shall be vouched for on one of the prescribed treasury forms.

“Vouchers shall be made out in favour of the person or persons to whom the money is actually due. Under no circumstances shall a cheque be raised, or cash paid for services for which a voucher has not been raised,” it added.

However, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Aliyu Ahmed, told the Senate committee that he was not with the response to the query and pleaded with the panel to give him another time to appear before the lawmakers.

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