By Lawrence Olaoye
The House of Representatives yesterday summoned the Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sarah Alade, the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Jonah Otunla and the Executive Director, Finance of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to appear before it today to explain their various roles in the alleged missing N59.6 billion service wide vote in 2006,
Chairman, House committee on Public Accounts, ordered that the agencies should appear before him with all documents bring involved the disbursement of the fund.
According to him, such documents include all bank transactions between July and December 2006; a copy of the federation account, copies of statements of accounts through CBN for the period under review.
He said, “If there was any mandate on the said missing N59.6bn it will show at a glance. We are tired of all the excuses of all the agencies involved claiming ignorance at one stage or the other. “
During the interactive session, the NNPC GM Accounts, Mr. Sambo Aliyu, had tendered a letter written by the Budget Office, in response to NNPC’s request to know the whereabouts of the missing fund.
According to Aliyu, the Budget Office replied that the money had been released to NNPC.
But when queried further, Aliyu said “the cash was not released, we did not see any money.”
His response further infuriated members of PAC who unanimously agreed that all the relevant agencies should be summoned once again.
Also, when the representative of CBN, Mr Dipo Fatokun, was asked to explain what he knew about the missing fund, he simply replied “we will need to get the mandates from the AGF”. This also incurred the flak of members who declared that Fatokun should come along with his superiors today as his responses so far has not been encouraging.
Equally queried on the missing fund, Mrs. Tayo Toluwase a director in the Budget Office simply said she did not have all the relevant details on the issue.
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