By Musa Baba Adamu
The Senate Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday, queried the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation for being negligent in carrying out their statutory responsibilities.
The Committee said the Auditor General’s negligence was relocated in massive corruption in Ministries, Departments and Agencies, which they couldn’t account for how their budgets were spent.
Chairman of the Committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, slammed the Acting Auditor General, Adolphus Aghughu for their poor performance and negligence, adding that funds released for overhead and capital projects were hoarded.
Urhoghide noted that the 2020 budget performance of the Auditor General was the poorest so far.
“Auditor General hoarded money voted for Capital project and overhead,” insisting that this largely accounted for the prevailing corruption and fraud in MDAs.
The chairman of the committee further disclosed that N850m set aside for overhead in the 2020 budget, only N680m was expended.
“There is no need to waste our time to appropriate budget to the auditor’s office hence there cannot spend it”.
Adolphus Aghughu the acting Director-General while speaking to correspondents said” their failures is as a result of COVID-19 that for over six months the nation was locked down”.
Aghughu assured the lawmakers that he would do the necessary thing before the runoff of the third financial year.
“The defense of the agency was watered down and it is baseless going by the position of the Senate.
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