By Christiana Ekpa
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts yesterday condemned and rejected the budget performance report of the National Commission on Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons.
The Chairperson of the Committee , Hon.Oluwole Oke who expressed dissapointment at the conclusion of the session said the document was worse than the presentation a Senior Secondary third year student.
The officials led by Senator Bashir Mohammed, a Federal Commissioner, received bashings on the presentation which the committee said was full of inconsistencies, errors and was not professionally done.
According to him, there are errors in the presentations , and in most cases, even the calculations were wrong, wondering if the calculations were manually done saying if the accounts and finance department had used an excel software, such challenges would not have arisen.
“This calls for training and more training of your accounts department”, Oke said.
While the lawmakers were x-raying the budgetary allocation of the commission vis-à-vis its spending between 2015 and 2020, the chairman said some components of the National Assemby’ Zonal intervention funds are embedded in the budget of the Commission and Sustainable Development Goals.
“ Some of our members have been accused of taking projects and have been using it to blackmail them.” He said it has become imperative to know what has been done with the money. “We expect you to take us through budgetary allocation and actual utilisation for the period under reference.”
However, the members became exasperated after a while as the presentation was having hiccups, causing them to ask the Deputy Director, Account for the Commission, Hassan Umar if he saw or supervised the document before its submission.
Umar said that he knew that the document was being compiled but was not giving the opportunity to go though it.
Also, the Deputy Director, Planning, Research and Documentation, Mrs Mama Edet said she knew nothing about the money or the computation, that her job was only to collect the details and compile them.
The Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Oke said: “ Ordinarily I should have dumped everything on the doorstep of the National Commissioner but he is just coming into office; you his lieutenants have not done well.
“Simple mathematical accuracy that an SS3 student will pick his calculator and add together is what we are struggling with here.
“Honourable members, if we agree, we simply return this document and ask that they go back and tidy it up properly,” he said.
Thereafter, the Commission’s document was rejected and they were told to return on Wednesday next week for a re-presentation.
