The House of Representatives has directed the Ministry of Finance to provide details of how it spent the sum of N512 million and other funds in its 2018 budget.
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The Chairman House Committee on Public Accounts, Wole Oke (PDP, Osun) and members of the committee gave the directive when the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mrs Suzette Taylor, and other officials appeared before the Committee on Thursday.
Their appearance was based on the audit reports by the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation on the ministry for 2018, 2019 and 2020. The committee specifically demanded documents regarding the utilisation of the funds as well as the President’s approval authorising the utilisation.
Speaking on the matter, the chairman of the committee, Wole Oke said other documents submitted have indicated that, another N550 million have allegedly been used to provide sector laboratories by the ministry.
Oke added that, the Committee had also discovered another alleged N37.7 million extra-budgetary expenditure in the budget document submitted to the committee by the ministry.
However, in her response, the Permanent Secretary said, she resumed office in December 2019 and does not have details of what happened when she was not occupying the office.
She further informed the Committee that the ministry received N770 million in trances of N300 million,N150 million and another N320 million at different times from the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
In its ruling, chairman of the Committee and members said that the officers should provide the records of what was done with the said N512 million.
