Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, and Senator representing Edo South in the National Assembly, Matthew Urhoghide, speaks on the onerous task of his committee and how he failed to secure a return ticket in the 2023 general elections, in this interview with Ben Ogbemudia

How has it been running the public accounts committee of the upper chambers in the last three years and what will you miss when you leave in June 2023?

First, let me say that running the public account committee is self-interest because it is quite laborious work to do. There is various aspect of public account starting from reviewing the auditor general audit account, you can imagine having to coordinate the account of the country and getting all the MDAs to bring in their accounts, we have over 650 MDAs in Nigeria, so those that have committed infractions in their financial transactions, the auditor has to put them in place, give them to the auditor general and write the report and send. So, I have to look at all that report, performance audit too that is done, value for money audit when it is done, they are brought again to public account committee for review and we have to do all of that, we also have to do status enquiry, this has to do with evaluating revenue and expenditure profiles, agents of government that are supposed to be revenue bearing, you have to see that from their records the volume of financial transactions they have conducted, and how much that is supposed to go to the government, looking at all this statuary laws that we have, where 20 per cent of the IGR earnings should go to the government, all the operating surplus over 80 per cent should go to the government, the expenditure profiles too, what they have spent, how it’s like, if they collect money from the government and still spend unnecessarily, and the percentage of their collections that has to go to the government, like in customs, like in Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) and all, we just must know, the banks owned by the government, the National Deposit Insurance Company (NDIC)( centre all of them, whatever it is, we want to know them, we want to see all the financial papers all other financial documents to look at what is supposed to be remitted to petition account if you agree, so that is status enquiry. When they disbursal for service Y votes, service Y votes are the money voted, is in our budget every year that we vote, put in a basket, and when there is a shortfall in the current expenditure and capital we can take from the Y vote. All this is not known to the standing committee that directly should protect all these agencies. Service Y vote is supposed to be authorised fully by Mr President and mediated through the Ministry of Finance and of course the Accountant-General releases the money. They collect this money they don’t account for it, it has been so for so many years. Service Y vote has grown gradually from a few hundred naira to millions of naira to billions and now trillions of naira. For instance, last year, it was N758bn, and it rose to N1.9trn as a result of the public Y vote, it is only the public account that can dictate it, and that is the exercise we are involved in now. So, when you are looking into consideration of disbursement for service A Y vote, it becomes a huge problem, and again we have to depend on referrals, anybody can come with emotions on the floor of the senate and the senate can say refer it to the public account committee, so, you can see the work is huge, referrals that comes from the senate, consideration of special involvement of financial transactions in the whole system of government, as it pertains to service Y vote, we are just investigating, if we want to do performance Audit, performance audit is value for money, for example, you are building second Niger bridge, the auditor general will go and see every step in the way, if the money given connotes the job being delivered, so that is value for money or performance audit, the financial system how much is budgeted let’s say N2.5trn, the time and what the money is being spent on, auditor general is supposed to know all this, and if he finds any infractions he will tell if the payment is made without evidence, working at other fine regulations.

Why was it not discovered early that the suspended Accountant-General of the Federation had stolen up to N109bn?

Let me say this, it is not the responsibility of the public account to go and look for money inside the purse, it is when money is spent that we come in, account general office works with the financial committee, not the public account committee, it is when money is spent that we come in, was it well spent? According to the laws and regulations? If not well spent, we will ask for a refund.

Do you go on oversights?

Yes, oversight is the only office of that auditor general’s office.

Your committee is like a service committee from the management of the senate, the committee room is the only room I saw in this whole complex that is quite different, is it the passion for the work that makes it different?

I can say yes, it is the passion when I came, the committee room was not too comfortable, but the little savings we could make, every month we are given about N900, 000 to look for all the stationeries and all the things we need to do, but we did savings and that is what I used to redesign the committee room to make it comfortable for our members, we spend lots of hours here in the room, so all the air conditioners have to be in good shape.

You will not be returning to the Senate in the next Assembly, do you think your committee members and the MDAs will miss you when you leave by June next year?

Well, I’m not God, God will certainly bring somebody else, I know that from the 8th and 9th senate we have done something really good at least, setting the stage again for the public account committee, we believe that the people coming after will continue from there, instance, auditor general’s report was becoming a stigma on the image of the National Assembly, that one of the major functions are specified in the constitution that we must look at the report of the auditor general of the federation but he reports directly to the National Assembly and that every year after appropriation, how money is spent, auditor general brings report National Assembly does not consider it, until I came and started from that 2015 that I came if the 1999 report was not considered by that time, let us consider the report available, so I picked it up. So I’ve done from 2015-2018 and left 2019 only, so I submitted the report this is the first time the senate is submitting the report on the account of the federation, the last on that has been submitted by the auditor general’s office in 2019, they are not ready with the report of 2020, 2021, 2022, so by the time I finish 2019, I would have cleared everything and anybody that is coming should be for 2021-2022 and it will get to the point where every year we will check what money is spent on before going for an operation, what we call the establishment law of agencies of government, whether CBN, police, teaching hospitals, Nigeria Immigration Service there are laws establishing them, go and check the establishing Act under Audit that each of this agencies must update their account before moving into a new financial year, but many of them, this is December and they have not submitted their account of last year. So, until they all update their account, they cannot bring it to the Auditor-General and the Federation itself or what we call financial statement of the country, federation account is supposed to be consolidated by the accountant general and send to auditor general to go through it, auditor general will go through it and within 90 days of receiving that report from the accountant general, the report should be submitted to the National Assembly and National Assembly shall commit it to the community of public account to vent on it, so that’s how it is, but the way the auditor general’s office is been treated, it cannot do this job, I will be deliberate because we have been telling them to give him staffs, a man that liberate all the audits account of over 779 agents of government doesn’t have staffs, he is supposed to employ auditors, that’s why we said, empower this man’s office, the money he needs to do this job, instead of going to give money to EFCC and ICPC after people have concluded corruption, give it to him, you are giving off budget of N62m capital, you are giving EFCC N20bn to N30bn, giving ICPC the same thing, a man that is supposed to check constitutional corruption within all the MDAs, ministry departments and agencies, you did not give him money, so the executive have decided that office to fail, he is supposed to be the boss checking them.

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Do you think this is intentional?

It is, I’ve said it several times, and this government came on the mantra of Anti-Corruption, it is hypocritical, if you don’t give the office what it deserves to do its job, it only means that all of you have colluded to make sure it doesn’t succeed and that’s the truth.

Following your very busy schedule do you have ongoing projects attracted to your constituencies?

Yes, I still attract the project to my constituency. Edo south secretarial district has the largest number of projects under my representation, and I’m still doing it. Two weeks ago they went to train 230 people on self-employment skills and they were given starter packs of N50, 000 to add up to whatever they have to start up with. I’ve trained over 6000 of them and I’m still training, and there is no local government out of the seven that I have not linked up, and I’m still enlightening them, I’ve given out my scholarship, I have a total of 364 scholarships in secondary and tertiary institutions that I’ve given out.

So, how do you continue with that once you leave the office?

Once I leave the office, that’s the end. It is personal to me, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, another person can continue from there if they so desire, I don’t meet such a legacy but I have established my own.

Do you have any regrets about not coming back?

I don’t regret it. It has pleased God that after eight years I should leave.

You were working so closely with the governor, what happened along the line?

I don’t know, I worked with him to the extent that it was mutually beneficial to both of us.

The 2023 general election is about 70 or less away and if you have been in the system for a long time, you should be able to know, who the right candidate is.

You don’t expect me to campaign against my party, it is my wish that PDP wins the election.

Even with the current crisis in PDP?

The crisis is surmountable, it has always been like that in PDP.

The way things are now?

Yes, it is always like that.

As one of the leaders of the party in Edo, there are insinuations that the PDP may not file National Assembly candidates going by the legal tussle within the party, what are you people doing to ensure that there is peace?

Let me say this, I am indeed a leader of PDP in Edo State, and nobody can take that away from me, I have been fortunate to be voted for twice by the people and then of course the rebuilding process of PDP. In rebuilding it, I had to leave everything to serve the party, I was there for four years and I put my everything into the party to make sure that it comes back normal, and God compensated me and with due respect Dan Orbih who has also shown so much commitment as old friends and committed party men, himself as chairman and me being the leader of the party, we were able to get the party out of the wood and then, of course, we were able to contest elections against all odds even when Oshiomhole was still in government and we won the elections, and 2019 the present governor was against us, we contested against him and won, so I owe my tenure to Edo south secretarial district and with support of friends like Dan Orbih I can never disown him, but not with the support of people in government now because they were against us, but we won. But when it now happened that we brought the government into the party with my very influential support within the ambit of my conviction that PDP was desiring to get back, that was why we casted everything aside, because the whole idea was for me to run as governor, it was because I turned it down that caused some of the problems for me, I said it would be better for us to bring governor Obaseki who was lately at that time was disqualified by his party, we brought him and decided to support him, we got all our aspirations to step down for him, and we campaigned fully for him put in everything and resources for him to become governor, I appreciate that fact, after he became governor, on the platform of PDP, what is supposed to be done was to sit down with the party to share power, and that was what Dan Orbih wanted and I very much agree with him, but to a large extent the governor himself is not and Dan Orbih, we tried several times to make peace reign, let there be understanding, when Obaseki won the election, we sat down to discuss how to share power and that has been the tradition, but we thought we could get the governor to understand that this is how things are done but he came up with his own tradition and I was the goal between, trying to get my old folks in PDP to get tolerance and understanding, tolerance in the sense that we didn’t get what we expected, me that gave my support to the governor, turning my party down because I want the present governor to win, but since he came in till today, he hasn’t given me a single position, he has never given me a single slot for job, he has never patronize me with contract that can possibly give me money, my own position that I earned was by the support of the people, I really was not desirous to come back the third time, it all happened because of what the people wanted, only for the doctored of the list that was used which Dan was against, which some of us thought with the governor we are going to use the list because the delegates were few, that is why Dan said they will not Sub-coordinate themselves to the list , but I thought it was well, but it eventually happened that they equally told others not to vote for me, so I lost the nomination and I am happy, it only taught me a lesson that I can never trust people in politics particularly the people you help, other parties rendered their ticket but I said no, I will seem desperate, PDP is my party, if whatever it is today I have lost nomination, so be it.

Would you say you were betrayed?

Betrayed? Well, however, you put it because if Governor Obaseki had told me that his people who are the delegates will not vote for me, I would have declined and agreed with him, but the assurance was there, even if he didn’t mention it, all his actions portrayed that we were together, so I wasn’t worried. And for what happened in Edo north and Edo central it was a betrayal because people were instructed to deliver certain persons, Senator Odia was with me, and people were instructed to deliver him and give money to the delegates.

Are you saying Edo south case was different?

Yes, It was different, I didn’t collect any kobo from anybody, but rather what was given to some of these delegates, I tried overnight, the day of the election I was trying to reach them if I had three days to see the delegates, I know what I would have done, and even if it was about giving money to the delegates nobody would be able to reach what I would give, there are still certain things that happened which I found out later, for instance, the ballot paper that was used I never knew, those people who were illiterates came and wanted to vote for a senator, and what they saw was senator Matthew Iduoriyekemwen and senator Matthew Urhoghide, it created confusion, so for them to say I lost the election with 11 votes is something I still don’t understand, so you are saying out of 247 candidates 11 did not mix the names? The court would have decided that but I refused to go to the court.