The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has expressed shock over the inability of the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris to account for over ₦28b remitted to the Federation Account by the Nigeria Customs Service in 2015.
This was contained in a statement issued to DAILY POST on Monday by the Executive Chairman of the Centre, Debo Adeniran.
The Anti corruption body said it was worried over the huge discrepancies in remitted figures between the Nigerian Customs and the Federation Account.
It wondered how the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, could have remitted the huge sum of N185b to the Federation Account using its automated mechanism whereas only N157b was reflected in the records of the Accountant General of the Federation.
According to the CACOL, “ There is something fishy when a representative of the same Accountant General who could not present a correct account of the funds remitted into the Federation Account by the NCS changes his statement to indicate that the N28b difference was used as Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Stabilisation Fund”.
“It is also unacceptable that the Accountant General of the Federation had no documentary evidence to support his questionable claim which could be considered as an afterthought .”
CACOL urged the Senator Matthew Uroghide-led Senate Public Accounts Committee to extend its investigations on the unaccounted N28b to the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Finance in order to get to the root of this suspicious development.
The organization further expressed worry that despite the present Federal Government’s anti-corruption crusade, the accounts of 109 Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of the Federal administration had not been audited for the past seven years.
It also added that the accounts of 76 of these MDAs had not been audited for the past 10 years, while about 160 federal institutions failed to submit their accounts for audit in 2017.
CACOL also hailed the Senate for its effort to enact a new law that would jail any federal official who fails to comply with audit requirements for at least five years.
It also urged President Muhammadu Buhari to give adequate support to the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation by increasing its budgetary allocation as this would be in tandem with the present administration’s anti-corruption campaign.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK