The Senate Wednesday said it would publish names of government’s ministries, departments and agencies that failed to respond to queries raised against them by the Auditor-General for the Federation.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan stated this after the Senate Public Accounts Committee presented its report on the 2015 report of the AuGF.
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The chairman of the committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, had said seven MDAs failed to respond to the invitation to defend audit queries against them.
He listed the agencies as the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, the Ministry of Health, the Nigeria Police Force, the Federal Fire Service, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, the Ministry of Police Affairs and the Ministry of Information and Culture.
Lawan said: “This is one of our major responsibilities as a Parliament to hold the executive to account and whoever is given the responsibility and the trust of running any agency with public funds must be accountable to the Parliament on behalf of the people.
“You’ve indicated a certain number of MDAs who failed to come to the Committee after invitation.
“I want you to go through your documents, the invitation letters or the reminders, this Senate will publish the names of these agencies for the public to know.
“This Senate will insist any public servant or civil servant that is given public fund for public good and has questions to answer and refuse to appear to answer should have no business in government because all of us are supposed to be accountable to the people.
“Therefore, if someone thinks he’s not going to be accountable, then that person has no business remaining in office.”
Urhoghide said the in 2015 audit report, 114 MDAs were queried, but 84 made submissions and appeared before the committee to defend the queries against them.
He warned that in the nearest future, any MDAs that failed to account for their past annual allocations would be blacklisted and denied subsequent appropriations.
He said records from Federation Account Allocation Committee showed that the total revenue into the Federation Account from various agencies amounted to N6trn for the year 2015.
It said the NNPC, the DPR and the FIRS deducted huge sums in the name of Joint Venture Cash Call (JVC) from the total revenue they generated before remitting the net figures to the Federation account.
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