Illegal N19b payment: Senate indicts Budget Office

The Budget Office of the Federation has been indicted for releasing  N19 billion to four unnamed agencies without  approval of  the Ministry  of Finance  the Senate has revealed.

This is contained in the 2016 Report of the Auditor General of the Federation   adopted by the Senate.

According to the AuGF, the Budget Office violated extant financial regulations when it released the N19  without   approval.

In addition to the indictment, the Senate directed  the Budget Office to retrieve the money from the four  MDAs and return it to the ministry.

The Senate had in October 2022 commenced investigation into the alleged   payment of the sum.

However, during the investigation   by the Senate Public Accounts Committee, the Budget Office was unable to present evidence of approval from the     Service Wide Vote to the four   agencies.

The Budget Office,   in its response to  a query  by the AuGF, claimed that it had written the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation requesting for details about the four MDAs without response.

The  Matthew Urhoghide-led  Senate committee noted that the Budget  Office did not present the letter it purported to have written to the Office of the Auditor-General requesting for the said details.

The failure made  the Senate to  adopt the report of the committee   and ask  that the money be refunded to the treasury.

The query is in the 2016 audit report of the Auditor-General of the Federation which was submitted to Senate for consideration.

The query   reads, “Four MDAs were paid the sum of N19 billion from the Service Wide Vote without the approval of the  Minister of Finance, some of the payments were made on a purported verbal directive from the Director-General.

“This act is against the Financial Regulation 301 and 302 which state that ‘recurrent  expenditure is paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) and no expenditure may be incurred except on the authority of a warrant issued by the Minister of Finance.

“In view of the above, it is difficult to accept the payment to the MDAs as proper and legitimate charges against the public funds.

“The Director-General should provide evidence of approval from the Minister of Finance for these expenditures or recover the sum of N19 billion from the benefiting MDAs.” Nation