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Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives, on Thursday, mandated its Committee on Insurance and Actuarial Matters to undertake a forensic audit of insurance premium paid by Ministries, Departments and Agencies(MDAs).
The comments is expected to hold an investigative hearing involving all relevant stakeholders in the insurance industry to ascertain the veracity of claims that there are infractions by both MDAs and other institutions in the industry.
The House also directed the MDAs to suspend all 2020 insurance renewal processes until there is a satisfactory resolution of all suspected infractions in their payment of premium.
This followed the adoption of a motion by the minority whip, Gideon Gwani on the “need to investigate alleged breaches, impunity and other infractions by some federal government institutions on insurance and actuarial matters and the need to ensure probity.”
Gwani, in his motion, expressed said there are allegations of infractions involving MDAs and insurance companies in the payment of insurance premium by government.
The lawmaker argued that this is to detriment of the citizens, noting that there is currently huge unsettled insurance claims in the country,” due to the fact the premium meant for these payment were suspected to have been squandered by some insurance companies and few individual, and is only forensic auditor will bring this to fore.”
He further stated that “several billions of naira are suspected to be paid as premium annually on either Non-existent assets or on unverifiable Data with unadjusted premium in breach of Section 61 of Insurance Act 2003 by some Federal government institutions, which include but not limited to; Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, National Youth Service Corp, some security Agencies in collaboration with Insurance Companies that do not pay claims. ”
The chairman, House Committee on Insurance and Actuarial Matters, Darlington Nwokocha, told journalists, that following the resolution, the chairman committee will swing into action immediately.
Nwokocha stated that the House is committed to sanitisation of the insurance industry, noting that at the end of the forensic audit, anyone or institution found to have breached extant laws will be brought to book.
According to him,”We are responsive to issue that bother on corruption or things that will mitigate the development of our economy in any sector. There are suspected corrupt practices in the insurance industry. I know that thee are some many breaches involving the stakeholders either the insurance companies or some MDAs or individuals or some brokers.
“Since this motion has come, it is something we need to unravel, considering the prayer of the motion, which has called for a forensic audit of all the activities, both the accounting, the financial outlay; we are going to investigate all to make bring all the offenders to the consequences of not doing the right thing at the right time.”
