Audit Queries: Reps Summon CBN, FIRS, NNPC Bosses, Others
The House of Representatives has summoned the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mele Kyari; and the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service, Hameed Ali, over audit queries issued by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation but which they failed to respond to.
Also expected to appear before the House Committee on Public Accounts are the Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mohammed Nami; the Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation Fiscal Allocation Commission, Elias Mbam; the Director, Department of Petroleum Resources, Sarki Auwalu; and the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, Uche Orji.
Others are the Managing Director, Nigerian LNG Limited, Tony Attah; the Executive Secretary, Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, Abdulkadir Saidu; managements of SURE-P and Federal Account Allocation Committee; permanent secretaries of Federal Ministries of Finance, Solid Minerals and Steel Development and the Director-General, Mining Cadastral Office, Obadiah Nkom.
The House also summoned the management of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, a Federal Government scheme created by the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration in 2012 to re-invest savings from the removal of petrol subsidy in critical infrastructure and social safety net programmes.
The Chairman of the committee, Wole Oke, issued the summons notice at an investigative hearing on the outstanding audit queries raised by the auditor-general, which several ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government had yet to respond to.
Earlier at the hearing, the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, had presented his responses to the queries issued by the auditor-general on the audited accounts of his office.
Before then, Oke said, “Let me quickly recap our engagement with you (accountant-general); we considered the Auditor-General of the Federation’s query on the accounts of your office and that of the Federation. That of the federal account, we have 2014 before us. Our record shows that some of the queries from 2007 to 2014 have not been answered.
“From 2014, we have some queries that have to do with your office here and we have those that have to do with some other agencies of government, like the NNPC, DPR, CBN, FIRS, Customs, SURE-P, Ministry of Finance, FAAC, NSWF, Ministry of Solid Minerals, Mining Cadastral Office, NLNG and PPPRA.
“You have to appear with these agencies and we don’t want to ambush anybody. Clerk, please convey this list to the Accountant-General of the Federation and list all the issues. Similarly, write all these agencies and convey all the queries to them; let them be aware of all the queries and issues. We will then fix a date for these agencies to come and appear with the Accountant-General of the Federation.
“Similarly, we shall be publishing all the issues in three national dailies. Nigerians deserve to know what has happened to their resources.”
