We Saved N500bn By Blocking Leakages In MDAs – Dikwa
The Federal Government says it has saved N500bn by blocking leakages in its Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
The Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Federal Ministry of Finance, Dr Mohammed Dikwa, said this when the Abuja chapter of the alumni of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies visited him on Wednesday.
He told the delegation that most of the achievements were recorded under his leadership at the Presidential Initiative for Continuous Audit. He attributed the success in achieving the feat to the experience he obtained from NIPSS.
Dikwa said that if the initiative was not in place, the N500bn saved by the government would have been spent by MDAs.
He said, “If you recall, over the last four years, this administration has put in place a lot of policies on ground and I am part of the financial policies put in place by the Ministry of Finance.
“I headed most of the reforms at the Ministry of Finance for the past four years. There are tangible results we have got over the years.
“One of the fundamental achievements was saving the government over N500bn from leakages and wastages under my leadership at PICA.
“If the initiative was not in place, this amount of money we are talking about would have been spent by MDAs.
“It was because of this initiative that was put in place that we were able to save that money from treasury looters.”
He said the primary focus of PICA was to put internal control systems in place to check unnecessary spending of government revenue.
Dikwa said through the initiative, the ministry had been able to maximise the utilisation of the resources of government through continuous audit, adding that this had helped to improve accountability of government revenue.
He said, “We have also put in place so many other measures like the Whistle-blowing Policy. When we came up with the policy, an average of 11, 000 tips were received on a monthly basis, but now, we hardly receive 20 to 30 tips simply because people have reduced the wrong doing in government.”
Head of the visiting delegation, Dr Mobolaji Olowo, said that the team decided to visit Dikwa, an alumnus of the institute, to congratulate him on his appointment as a permanent secretary.