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From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Gombe state government says it has approved contract for the Local Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (LIFMIS).
According to the government, the N253 million project was to improved on development and submission of the Local Government (LG) final financial account draft to meet the International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS) in the LGA of the state.
Addressing newsmen at a joint press conference on Thursday in Gombe, the Auditor General in charge of LG in Gombe state, Mahdi Mele Aliyu stated that the project was necessitated by failure of eight out of the 11 LG of the state in submission of annual financial reports.
He said, “I can confirm, that it is only three LG that submitted their final account to the office of the auditor general as demanded by law. The financial regulation which is the financial memorandum is there and it state’s that by the end of March of the year preceding, a draft of final accounts most reach the office of the auditor general”.
“When we saw the need for this project, we contacted the governor, speedily he gave approval and at our last seating with the house of assembly we put across a matter, that we need to computerize our local government accounting system, they so reason with my office and they agreed and support the move to integrate the accounting system at the local government,” the auditor general explained.
Explaining further, the Gombe state commissioner of finance, Malam Muhammad Magaji stated that the project was part of the reform process that was initiated by the Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya led administration in the state.
“The reform process that is being undertaking by the Gombe state Government and of course dovetailing into the affairs of the 11 LGA of the state. These reforms are in different aspects of our lives, but for today we are talking about reforms in the accounting processes and procedures at the local government level”.
The governor approved that we engage a consultant to ensure that we have a software that we will be able to ensure that all our accounting books are brought together and under the IPSAS on accrual basis,” the commissioner explained.
While urging officials at the LG level to support consultant engaged by the state government the commissioner revealed that the express book to be brought by the consultant has capability of migrating the LG financial system from the IPSAS on cash basis to the IPSAS on accrual basis.
He said, “Staff will be trained to be able to utilize the new system and software and also to be able to immigrate from the cash basis to the accrual basis, so there is a seamless migration and that will ensure that we will not lose any data, we will also not lose information from the present system that we are using”.
