By Nathaniel Zacchaeus
The Senate yesterday threatened to record zero allocation to the 2023 capital budget of 100 Federal Ministries, Departments, and Agencies until they appear before its Committee on Public Accounts to give explanations on the service-wide vote expenditure from 2017 to 2021.
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, gave the threat on the floor of the Senate while ruling on a point of order raised by the Chairman of the Senate Public Accounts Committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide.
The Senator raised a point of order that drew the attention of his colleagues to the flagrant disregard of heads of federal MDAs to Senate invitations to explain how much they collected from the SWV totalling N1.9trn shared to them by the Executive between 2017 and 2021.
He noted that the agencies’ heads who were public officers were disrespecting the Senate even though Sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution gave the red power to summon them.
He said the Service Wide Vote is extra-budgetary spending made to fill shortfalls in capital and recurrent expenditures, which are not audited by the Auditor General of the Federation and not known to various standing committees of the National Assembly.
He said the affected agencies were also those who refused to appear before the committee to answer queries slammed on them by the Auditor General of the Federation on alleged financial infractions.
Some of the MDAs are the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ministries of Interior, Transportation, Mines, Solid Mineral Development, Information, Communication, Petroleum, Defence, Police Affairs, Sports, Works and Housing, and Women Affairs.
Others are the State House, Presidential Fleet, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Independent National Electoral Commission, North East Development Commission, Nigerian Intelligence Agency, and the Nigerian Air Force among others.
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Urhoghide said, “The agencies that have vehemently refused to appear before our committee, this list of agencies and the amount that is against their name are staggering.
“I crave your indulgence that we invite through your order either by way of warrant of arrest or anything so that these agencies can come so that we can complete our report and submit it to this Senate.
Lawan upheld Urhoghide’s point of order and insisted that the public officers who utilised funds appropriated to their MDAs must give account.
He said, “Your point of order is sustained fully and completely, totally sustained, you are right on the dot to bring to the plenary your grievances secondly, I once served as Chairman of the public account committee for eight years. My only problem is when you write them they ignored invitations.
“Reading this list at plenary allows the agencies to now know if they were not aware before for those that may claim ignorance.
“I am taking the opportunity here to advise that in the next one week if the name of any agency is here that agency should reach the committee on public account of the Senate to sort out when the agency would appear before the committee.
“If there is no communication whatsoever and no cogent and verifiable reason is given we will slash the budget of the agencies. We can even decide to withhold their capital vote.
“Heads of the affected agencies must take this very seriously because any serving public officer must be ready to render accounts on public funds and if not ready to do so, should quit since nobody should be above the law.”
