The Nigerian Senate has demanded a refund of N19 billion paid by the Budget Office to four ministries, departments and agencies, MDAs without the approval of the Minister of Finance.
This was discovered by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, led by Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP, Edo South), which began an investigation into the alleged illegal payment of N19 billion to four unnamed MDAs by the Budget Office in October last year.
At the conclusion of its investigation, the budget office was unable to present evidence of Ministry of Finance approval prior to payment of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote to four unnamed federal agencies.
In response to the inquiry, the Federation's Budget Office stated that it had written to the office of the Auditor General of the Federation requesting details for the four MDAs but had received no response.
Senator Urhoghide, Chairman of the Committee, noted in his remarks that the Budget Office did not present the letter it claimed to have written to the Auditor-General's office requesting details.
Due to the budget office's failure to present approval for the payment of N19 billion to the four MDAs, the Senate adopted the Senate Public Accounts Committee's report on the matter, requesting a refund of the said amount to the country’s purse.
The query appears in the Auditor-General of the Federation's 2016 report, which was submitted to the Senate for consideration last week.
The query by the Auditor-General read: “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the Minister of Finance.
“Some of the payments were made on purported verbal directives from the Director-General.
“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.
“In view of 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.”