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Uche Usim and Fred Itua, Abuja
For three years running, the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) headed by Mr Anthony Ayine, has not released any audit report of government institutions since being appointed in 2017. The last audit report was for the 2016 fiscal year.
It was against this backdrop that the Senate Committee on Public Accounts headed by Matthew Urhoghide, recently lambasted the AuGF, Mr Anthony Ayine, stressing his office lacked sufficient manpower to carry out its statutory function of auditing the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government as a constitutional body and the supreme audit institution of Nigeria.
The Committee also claimed that the operational tardiness confirms legislators belief that the OAuGF was designed to fail as an agency of government.
Before now, Mr Ayine had accused the National Assembly of not concluding works on audit reports submitted by his office to the parliament since 1999.
The AuGF is empowered to undertake audits of all income and expenditure of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
However, the constitution prohibits the Auditor-General from auditing the accounts of “government statutory corporations, commissions, authorities, agencies, including all persons and bodies established by an Act of the National Assembly.”
As a result, the OAuGF cannot audit the financial statements of parastatals although it can undertake periodic checks on state- owned entities. The meaning of periodic checks in the context of the constitution has not been properly defined since no accounting /auditing book has ever defined what a periodic check represents.
The mandate of the OAuGF is also restricted to the audit of federal agencies.
Nonetheless, Urhoghide accused the AuGF of relying on findings of external auditors to write his reports.
He further slammed Ayine for failing on his part to query the use of one particular external auditor by an agency for over 10 years.
Urhoghide said: “The much I know since I became the Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, is what I can say. When the Auditor-General came for his budget defence, I told him that the fact that we have not conducted hearing on his queries does not mean that he should not bring audit reports. We have not received audit report for 2016. The Auditor-General assumed office in 2017.
“Since he came, he has not submitted any audit report to the National Assembly. Our Committee was not set up to consider audit report alone. We have a lot of motions that we moved. We have submitted reports on status enquiries of those whose audited accounts have been submitted. We investigated and submitted reports on the subsidy issue, the $1billion euro-bond issue, withdrawals made from the Service Wide Vote from 2012 till date.
If we have audit reports from 2015 till date, we would be able to establish a pattern.
“For instance in 2016, we saw that N14 billion was removed from one federal fund meant for intervention in states that were distressed and given to the Ministry of Defence. The Auditor-General queried that. I called the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Defence and drew his attention to it, because it is an extra-budgetary allocation made to them. That was apart from the N2.7 billion given to them behind the doors from the Service Wide Votes. I asked what they have done with the funds. It is only Public Accounts Committee that can see all those things.
