SAN FRANCISCO, October 13, (THEWILL) – The House of Representatives committee on Public Accounts will from this week begin investigation into the disbursement and expenditure of service-wide votes from 2008-2013 to agencies under the Presidency by the Budget Office.
Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Hon. Adeola Solomon Olamilekan (APC,Lagos), disclosed the decision of the Committee to make the inquiry in Abuja.
The lawmaker said it has become imperative to find out how the funds which he described as “loose funds” for the Executive’s utilisation were disbursed and utilised.
According to him, the Committee was surprised that despite the abundance of these lose monies extracted from every budget every year; the Auditor General’s office was still lacking enough funds to audit government accounts.
“We are going to investigate the Budget Office on Service-wide votes for five years, especially the year 2011; how much was spent, how much was the expenditure for that year and all these years.
“Forty percent of the nation’s budgets which amounted to about N1.6trillion went for service-wide votes, and nothing went to the Auditor General of the federation. Rather, the budget office has been paying hired auditors to audit the service-wide vote accounts”, he said.
The Chairman said the members after an exhaustive discussion on the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) accounts, thought the nation was being short-changed and pilfered by the budget office, hence the need for queries to be raised by the Committee.
The service wide votes, usually takes 40 percent of every budget. The Budgets of 2008 under Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to President Goodluck Jonathan, were pegged at over N4trillion, making the percentage of service-wide votes at approximately N1.6trillion or there about.
BY SAINT MUGAGA, ABUJA
