The House of Representatives has raised alarm over the refusal of government revenue generating agencies to remit revenue generated? to the Federation Account.
Expressing concerns at a crucial meeting between the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts and the Auditor General of the Federation, Samuel Okura, and Accountant General of the Federation, Joseph Ogunniyi Otunla, in the National Assembly at the weekend, Chairman of the Committee, Solomon Adeola, said they? were poised to stop the practice.
He also decried the failure of MDAs to audit their accounts and submit to the office of the Auditor-General, even as he didn’t absolve the office of any blame.
Adeola said: “The Auditor-General has no excuse for failing to properly audit the accounts of ministries and agencies of government because the constitution has sufficiently empowered him to carry out such responsibilities.
If you carry out your duties very well, we may not even have need to establish all these anti-graft agencies.”
Responding, the Auditor-General, Samuel Okura, said the agencies in question did not make their books available to the office for auditing, adding that they disregarded the instruction because there was no penalty for failure to comply.
“Most of the time, those we audit do not take us seriously; they tell us to our faces that our report won’t change things, that we may go ahead to write whatever report we can write about them, but it would not affect them because the National Assembly has not been acting on audit reports.
“The problem is further compounded by the fact that we have no powers to sanction those agencies who failed to transmit their audit reports to us”, he informed the lawmakers.
?
?
?
?