Stop Emasculating Auditor General’s Office, Senate Warns
By Andy Asemota
The senate on Tuesday said the fight against corruption will be a mirage unless the gross underfunding of the office of the Auditor General is stopped.
Giving the warning while receiving the Director General, Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, the Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, Mathew Urhoghide, maintained that the underfunding of the Auditor General’s office was akin to “executive conspiracy and it’s really perplexing.”
Urhoghide further urged that the budgetary allocations of the office should be reviewed upwards the auditor general to effectively monitor the nation’s over N13 trillion 2021 appropriation.
He lamented that anti corruption agencies: EFCC and ICPC, were allocated more than N20 billion each in recent years while the auditor general’s office mandated to nip corruption in the bud rather embarking on expensive stolen asset recovery was allotted about four million naira annually.
He then charged the auditor general office to do justice to the present administration’s avowed anti corruption fight by also embarking on performance appraisal of capital intensive projects to ensure there would be value for the money being sunk into the projects.
On the failure of most of the nation’s MDAs to have their books audited and submitted to the senate in accordance with the constitution, Urhoghide promised to come up with a motion to end the menace.
The committee chairman also expressed concern that reports from some Nigerian missions revealed that the nation had been losing billions of naira to corrupt envoys.
He therefore tasked the Budget Office to work in synergy with the Auditor General’s office in checking any rot in the nation’s over 1200 MDAs.
Responding, the Director General, Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, debunked the impression that the office of the auditor general had been marginalized in appropriation of funds, adding that the parameters for budgetary allocations to EFCC, ICPC and the Auditor General’s office were different.
Akabueze however lauded the law makers’ passion to ensure accountability and transparency in handling the nation’s meagre resources even as he added that there had been an improvement in the budgetary allocations of Auditor general’s office since he assumed the leadership of Budget Office
