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Uche Usim, Abuja
For the umpteenth time, the Federal Government has warned Ministries, Departments or Agencies (MDAs) to live above board in all their financial dealings or face severe sanctions for identified breaches, especially in relations to the submission of audit reports.
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris, gave the warning on Wednesday in Abuja at the virtual meeting with Directors/Heads of Internal Audit of MDAs.
According to him, auditors have been mandated to turn in their reports as and when due in line with the Financial Regulations 1706.
The provisions of FR 1706 states that “The Internal Auditor shall produce monthly, quarterly and half-yearly reports for the Accounting Officer on the progress of the audit with copies to the Accountant-General of the Federation and Auditor-General for the Federation.”
The AGF regretted that this aspect of the law has been constantly breached by most MDAs, noting that violators will be visited with the full weight of the law going forward.
He said, “It has been observed that most MDAs are behind in their reports while others have wilfully refused to render these reports which are clear violation of the provision of the Financial Regulations.
“Consequently, may I inform you that refusal to forward these reports by any MDA forthwith would be regarded as an attempt to undermine the authority of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Head of Internal Audit of such defaulting MDA(s) will be duly sanctioned.”
He expressed satisfaction with the giant strides so far recorded in the modernisation of the Internal Audit functions in the Public Sector.
He gave areas where progress have been made to include trainings of Audit Monitoring Department staff to assist in training other Internal Auditors on Computer Assisted Audit Techniques; and the establishment of an audit data capturing centre with a view to securing an interface with the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System and GIFMIS Platforms through which transaction can be viewed online-real-time.
In order to effectively implement this initiative, he said 20 laptops and 20 desktops computers have being acquired while approval has also being granted for the acquisition of five Interactive Data Extract Analysis software Licences that would be used by the Audit Monitoring Department and deployed to some Pilot Agencies that indicate interest to acquire the software.
The IDEA software is a computer based file interrogation tool that can be used by numerous individuals and organisations including auditors, accountants, investigators and Information Technology staff.
It analyses data in multiple ways and allows for extraction, sampling and manipulation of data in order to identify errors, problems, specific issues and trends.
The AGF expressed optimism that the Audit Modernisation Project would help to upgrade the level of audit from current practices to a level where audits are conducted in line with international best practices, using modern approach and information and communication technologies.
