By Usman Sulyman
The House of Representatives has summoned Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele; Director-General, National Pension Commission, Aisha Dahir-Umar; and Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Muhammad Nami, demanding them to explain various expenditures totalling N300bn.
Others summoned by the House Committee on Public Accounts on various audit queries issued by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation were Head of Service, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan; Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami; and Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris.
Chairman of the committee, Mr Wole Oke, issued the summons in Abuja on Tuesday at an investigative hearing on the audit queries issued by the OAGF to some ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government on the ‘cash withheld’ totalling N182.08bn in 2014.
Others include audit query on the N14.06bn issued against FIRS; and another N12.64bn against the Head of Service Pension Office, as well as Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, Ministry of Communications, FIRS, Nigerian Board for Incubator Centre and the National Gallery of Arts.
The committee also summoned Federal Ministry of Defence, Federal Road Safety Commission, Accident Investigation Bureau, National Sports Commission, among others, over N425.127m loans unaccounted for.
The committee also summoned the Accountant General of the Federation over 83 queries in its 2014 annual audit report.
The committee, however, stepped down the queries and directed that CBN should provide the certificate showing the balance of the account as of December 31, 2014, and the bank statement of all the various sub-heads as of December 31, 2014, pursuant to Sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution.
In the same vein, the committee also summoned the Minister of Labour, Employment and Productivity, Senator Chris Ngige, over N7.88bn unaccounted fund as contained in an audit query.
According to the committee, Ngige is to provide the retirement particulars for the N5bn bailout fund released by the Accountant-General to the ministry for community service scheme as well as retirement particulars for additional sum of N 2,880,395,462 disbursed to the ministry for Vocational Training Centre under the SURE-P Programme.
The committee also summoned four officials from the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (Management) Board, namely, two former Executive Secretaries , Mrs Adefunke Kasali and Mrs Asabe Ahmed; former General Manager (Operations), Aisha Usman; and General Manager (Finance and Accounts), Yusuf Musa, over the 2016 audit query.
