Senate Uncovers How MDAs Squandered N3.8trn Under Buhari

MDAs through the backdoor received billions of naira to them between 2017 and 2021
How public offices misused funds for SWV under Buhari’s regime
A complete list of affected agencies revealed!

Eko Hot Blog reports that the Senate has exposed how Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the federal government misused the N3.8 trillion they received from the Service Wide Votes (SWV) in four years.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Matthew Urhoghide, said the committee’s investigation revealed that hundreds of billions of naira were disbursed to some agencies of the federal government for the purpose of salary shortfalls despite the fact that such funds had already been catered for in the yearly budgets of the agencies.

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The Service Wide Vote is an extra-budgetary provision for MDAs to meet dire needs or special emergencies for which no or insufficient funds were made in the Appropriation Act.

The Act that established the Service Wide Vote prescribed that there must be a formal request made to and approved by the president of the country before such funds would be accessed by any agency of the government.

The Senate Public Accounts Committee had probed the disbursement of N5 trillion from the SWV to more than 200 government agencies between 2017 and 2021 when ex-President Muhammadu Buhari was in power.

The committee, chaired by Senator Matthew Urhoghide, invited 207 government agencies for the investigation, but only 119 agencies appeared.

The panel presented its report to the Senate during Wednesday’s plenary and its recommendations were adopted.

Urhoghide, while presenting the report, said his committee after investigation discovered that many agencies collected fund from SWV without recourse to the National Assembly committees that is mandated by law to oversight the agencies.

He said some of the MDAs did not make formal requests for the money that was sent to them by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

He said where the approval of the President was sought and obtained, some MDAs used the resources for unrelated expenditure purposes.

The senator said some MDAs collected the fund for projects that were already budgeted for in the Appropriation Acts over the years.

He said, “Hundreds of Billions of Naira were claimed to have been used for the purposes of paying salary shortfalls whereas such agencies had already collected appropriation for personnel emolument and were on the IPPIS platform.

“In some instances, huge sums Of money were thrown at agencies which they didn’t apply for/or are not in the know of where the money came from and for what purpose.

“The IPPIS intervention towards meeting insufficiencies or shortfalls in Personnel Costs has been bastardized and running into huge sums of money needing legislative scrutiny.

“Most of the MDAs involved in the period under review deliberately avoided the Committee’s invitation for appearance and refused to make submissions, perhaps for lack of satisfactory explanations on the utilization of the funds released to them.”

The senate, after adopting the committee’s recommendations, urged the Executive to use a supplementary budget approach to meet emergencies instead of a Service Wide Vote, which it said amounts to affront/erosion of the approval powers of the National Assembly.

The committee also recommended that the Auditor-General for the Federation should be given full access by the Accountant General and other MDAs to audit Service Wide Vote expenditures annually and report to the National Assembly.

It also called for an in-depth investigation into the operations of IPPIS to stern the rising cases of irregularities in the system.

Some of the affected agencies are the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Transportation, Health, Works and Housing, Information and Culture, Mines and Steal Development, Police Affairs, Defence, Youths and Sports, Petroleum, and Aviation.