Nigeria’s House of Representatives on Monday said it would commence the naming and shaming of ministerial agencies that failed to submit their audited accounts to the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
Chairman, Public Accounts Committee of the House, Hon. Wale Oke, stated this at the inaugural sitting of his committee’s public hearing on the need to investigate refusal by non treasury and partially funded agencies to render audited accounts to the Accountant-General of the Federation from 2014- 2018.
Mr Oke, while addressing representatives of the different agencies noted that their failure to submit audited accounts impairs the ability of the Accountant-General to effectively render the account of the nation.
He reminded them that the House of Representatives under the leadership of Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, it is no longer business as usual as such heads of MDAs must take their duties seriously.
He assured them that the House is not out to witch hunt any agencies but hope to use such engagements to identify challenges faced by agencies that require legislative intervention.
The committee had requested from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the list of non-ministerial agencies that run independent budgets or are partially funded in the national budget.
In its response, the Office of the Accountant-General for the Federation transmitted the list of 67 non-funded and partly-funded bodies as detailed in the updated Schedule 21 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, for legislative scrutiny.
From the report of the AGoF, in 2014, 148 MDAs failed to submit audited report to, and in 2016 the number rose to 323.
Declaring the hearing open, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, frowned at the non-appearance of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation. He said the action of CBN and co is a violation of the constitution.
Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), Abba Bello, while responding to questions from the committee said the bank failed to file its 2015, 2016 and 2017 reports on time due to certain unresolved issues between the bank and CBN. He however said the issues have been resolved and that enabled the bank to file its account of 2018 on time.