DAILY TRUST
Dozens of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government misused N3.8 trillion they received from the Service Wide Votes (SWV) in four years, according to a Senate report.
Service Wide Votes is the government’s contingency fund in the annual budget.
The Senate Public Accounts Committee had probed the disbursement of N5 trillion from the SWV to more than 200 government agencies between 2017 and 2021, when ex-President Muhammadu Buhari was in power.
The committee, chaired by Senator Matthew Urhoghide, invited 207 government agencies for the investigation, but only 119 agencies appeared.
The panel presented its report to the Senate during Wednesday’s plenary and its recommendations were adopted.
Urhoghide, while presenting the report, said his committee after investigation discovered that many agencies collected fund from SWV without recourse to the National Assembly committees that is mandated by law to oversight the agencies.
He said some of the MDAs did not make formal requests for the money that was sent to them by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
He said where the approval of Mr. President was sought and obtained, some MDAs used the resources for unrelated expenditure purpose.
The senator said some MDAs collected the fund for projects that were already budgeted for in the Appropriation Acts over the years.
He said, “Hundreds of Billions of Naira were claimed to have been used for the purposes of paying salary shortfalls whereas such agencies had already collected appropriation for personnel emolument and were on the IPPIS platform.
“In some instances, huge sums Of money were thrown at agencies which they didn’t apply for/or are not in the know of where the money came from and for what purpose.
“The IPPIS intervention towards meeting insufficiencies or shortfalls in Personnel Costs has been bastardized and running into huge sums of money needing legislative scrutiny.
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