JONATHAN ACCUSED OF BIGGEST FRAUD: N16Tr GOES TO SUPER
OFFICES; WHILE N4Tr GOES TI MASSES IN ANNUAL BUDGET
The House of Representatives said it has uncovered what may
turn out Nigeria’s biggest fraud yet, accusing the Jonathan administration of
spending N16 trillion on its super offices yearly, while the entire country is
given a meagre budget of about N4 trillion.
The claim was made on Sunday by the House of Committee on
Public Accounts.
The committee said while the Nigerian government complains of
revenue for key projects, the same government has allowed dozens of powerful
offices, graded as “statutory and extra-ministerial departments” to spend a
minimum of N16 trillion yearly.
The amount spent by the offices are not regulated, audited
or appropriated by the National Assembly.
Much of the figure are generated by the respective offices and are deployed at the whims of their chief executives.
Much of the figure are generated by the respective offices and are deployed at the whims of their chief executives.
Such statutory offices include the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Central Bank of Nigeria, National Communications
Commission, Federal Inland Revenue Services, and Nigerian Ports Authority.
The revelation came as part of an ongoing examination of
finances of government and its 601 agencies, the House committee said.
The committee, which spoke through its chairman, Adeola
Solomon-Olamilekan, on Sunday, said when combined with Nigeria’s official
annual expenditure, the country spends over N20 trillion yearly.
Mr. Solomon-Olamilekan said the N4.3 trillion budget for
2015, amid an oil crisis, is a “far cry” which does not include the finances of
“statutory and extra ministerial departments” which have been running “about
N16 trillion” without public auditing.
“The N4.9tn, N4.6tn or N4.3tn, as the case may be, is the
budget that the whole Nigerians are listening to but in the true sense of it,
the budget of other statutory and extra-ministerial departments put together is
about N16tn,” he said.
“So, the total overall budget year in year out is over
N20tn, which the executive arm operates, but nobody is asking questions as to
the implementation of all these budgets.
“Nobody is bringing information on the implementation of all
these budgets; and this is one area Nigerians need to start asking questions in
order to move this country forward,”
he said.
The House committee said the federal government has
encouraged the fraud to continue by deliberately refusing to fund the office of
the Auditor General of the Federation, to weaken its capacity to check the
violation.
The committee said by reducing the budget of office of
Auditor General from N1.9 billion to N100 million in 2015,
the government deliberately ensured the office no longer had the capacity to
audit 601 departments and 144 foreign missions.
The big cut was carried out by the Ministry of Finance,
citing falling oil revenues.
“How can we imagine that the capital budget of the office of
AGF for the year 2015 was reduced from N1.9bn to N100?
“Can you also imagine an office of the AGF that has 144
foreign missions to audit and as we speak, between 1999 to date, that office
has not audited up to 30 of these foreign missions while three quarter of these
foreign missions are also revenue generating agencies?
“So, there is nobody to audit the revenue generated and the
expenditure they incur.
“The office of the AGF has been short-changed and the budget
has been reduced to nothing. As such, the government of the day is having a
field day to carry out whatever its wants to do because they know they have an
office that is not functioning,”
Mr. Solomon-Olamilekan said.
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