The Senate Public Accounts Committee yesterday commenced an investigation into the N5 trillion Service Wide Votes (SWV) spending by 252 agencies between 2017 and 2021.
Service Wide Vote (SWV) is the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.
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The investigation followed the discovery by the Senate that many agencies collected funds from SWV without recourse to the National Assembly committees that are mandated by law to oversight the agencies.
Addressing the newsmen, the Chairman of the Senate Public Account Committee, Senator Mathew Urhoghide said that the investigation has to do with the disbursement of Service Wide Votes between 2017 and 2021.
He said, “We want to see how this money is being expended. There is confusion on approval; we want to really get to know what is going on.”
He said that the committee will issue an arrest warrant on any agency that failed to appear before it.
The lawmaker disclosed that Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) got N180 billion from the vote, NBET collected N2.9 billion while the ministry of Humanitarian received N445 billion.
He listed the agencies that are expected to appear before his panel in the ongoing investigation including the ministry of information and culture, defence, NHIS, Police, ministry of power, Bank of Industry, Water Resources, National Assembly, Public Complaints Commission (PCC), Directorate of State Service (DSS) and Presidential Amnesty Programme.
