Reps Summon Emefiele, Ex-Mint Bosses Over Eight-year Unaudited Accounts
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has summoned the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, and former managing directors of Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc for allegedly failing to audit the accounts of the company for eight years.
They were also summoned for non-constitution of the board of the company.
The committee issued the summons after it was told that the agency operated without a board and financial audit since 2012.
The current MD of the NSPM, Mr Abbas Masanawa, had appeared before the panel, represented by the Director of Finance, Mr Augustine Omotoso.
The panel is investigating the expenditure profiles of over 300 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government.
Omotoso, while making his presentation before the panel, told the lawmakers that there was no financial audit of the agency since 2012. He also said the board had yet to be put in place since he assumed office.
The CBN governor is statutorily the chairman of the NSMPC board.
The NSMP Plc was jointly established in 1963 by the Nigerian government and a British company.
The President Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration had in February 2002 privatised the company amidst controversy. The then Managing Director, Sambo Dasuki, had resigned in protest.
In 2006, the then Governor of the CBN, Charles Soludo, had decried that Nigeria was the only country in the world that had a mint but still imported currency.
The committee also set up an inquiry into the project performance and expenditure of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, since it was set up in 2010.
The Managing Director of the NCDMB, Simbi Wabote, told the committee that there was no properly constituted board of his agency.
Wabote, who assumed office on December 12, 2016, also said, “I didn’t meet any audited accounts.”
He said since its establishment on April 22, 2010, its board had never met and that there was no external audit conducted on its finances.
Chairman of the committee, Mr Oluwole Oke, who was miffed by the revelation, ordered a thorough vetting of the agency’s operations, both financial and administrative, since 2010.
