COVID-19 Probe: Reps orders Federal Fire Service to refund N1.48bn

By Christiana Ekpa

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives has ordered the Federal Fire Service to refund the sum of N1.484 billion within Seven days to the covers of the Federal Government being the intervention funds it received for the COVID-19 epidemics and failed to account for
The committee being Chaired by Hon. Bamidele Salam issued the directive when the Service, for the umpteenth time failed to honour its invitation to appear and explain how it expended the funds.
Deputy Chairman of the committee, Hon. Jeremiah Umar, bad moved a motion for the refund of the amount saying that that “so many other agencies have appeared before this committee, and the investigation is ongoing. I don’t see any reason why the Fire Service will ignore a committee like this”.
The Lawmaker stated that since the Service could not appear to explain what the money was spent for, it should refund it to the coffers of the federation.
While ruling on the motion, Hon Salam stressed that the Fire Service must make the refund of the sum of N1.484 billion it collected as COVID-19 intervention fund in 2020/2021, and submit evidence of the refund within Seven days while the other affected agencies would be invited once for the last chance to make appearance
This came just as the committee issued fresh invitations to some other defaulting Ministries Departments and Agencies MDAs, of the federal government to appeared and explain various queries standing against them from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation on several billions of Naira allocated to them during COVID-19 as intervention funds
The affected MDAs are, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. 50 billion, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation- N33 billion, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, through the National Centre for Women Development-N625 million, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)-N25 billion, and the Federal Ministry of Health- N10 billion.
Speaking on the development, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon Salam lamented that the Federal Fire Service had snubbed the Committee’s summons for three different times in a row, while the other affected MDAs did same twice each, saying that the later group have within one week to appear, or face sanctions.
According to the him, “A public officer who fails to respond to the Auditor-General’s query satisfactorily within 21 days for failure to collect Government Revenue due shall be surcharged and be transferred to another schedule. Where an officer fails to give a satisfactory reply to an audit query within 7 days for his failure to account for government revenue, such officer shall be surcharged for the full amount involved and such officers handed over to either the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC)”