Reps Grill Fire Service Chief Over N1bn Recruitment, Logistics Cash

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts on Tuesday grilled the Commandant General of the Federal Fire Service (FFS), Ibrahim Liman over expenditure of over N1 billion on recruitment and logistics between 2017 to date without recourse to laid down financial rules.

The office of the Auditor General of the Federation had queried the Service for expending the amount on the said exercise between the period in question when there was actually only one recruitment exercise held in the period under review.

The FFS boss who appeared before the Committee being Chaired by Hon Busayo Oluwole Oke (PDP- Osun) could not give satisfactory answers to the members of the Committee on the issues raised

The CG also failed to back up his explanations with relevant documents, necessitating the committee to write to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN and the Bureau for Public Procurement, BPP seeking the account statements and expenditure of the service.

Members of the Committee also raised concern about the award of several contracts by the Service which promoted the chairman to direct the FFS boss to produce the nominal role of monies spent within the period under review before the Committee unfailingly.

Hon Oke pointed out that since the expenditure records of the service were not clear enough, the BPP should include the name of contractors of FFS and their financial records while appearing before the Committee.

Also, all the ministers summoned by the Committee over their failure to appear before it over several audit queries against their Ministries, Departments and Agencies did not show up on Tuesday.

The affected Ministries are Works and Housing, Health, Interior, and Environment.

Already the Committee had written to both the Secretary to the Government of the federation, SGF and the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of the Federation respectively over the development.