The House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Accounts, on Monday declared that reckless use of government resources was going on under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Chairman of the PAC, Kingsley Chinda, alongside members of the committee, said this while addressing journalists in Abuja on Monday
Chinda said, “What we have observed is that not much has changed from the reckless system that we have operated in Nigeria. Not much has changed. Public spending is still not very responsible and so, we need to begin to change.
“One typical example is the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation from where we get our raw materials. The good thing that will happen to the fight against corruption is assent to the Audit Commission Bill. We pray that the assent is not refused as usual.
“If we had gone the way you are looking at the Service Wide Vote, I am not sure that we would have achieved what we have achieved today. So, there are areas that deliberately, we refused to go the old way to enable us to achieve what we have achieved.
“We met a backlog of Auditor-General’s reports on MDAs hanging. Even when we meet our colleagues from other climes, it is a low-point for this country; it is a low-point for our drive against corruption. And so, we said we must begin to erode that. If that is our only achievement, so be it.
“A total of 552 MDAs were queried by the Office of the Auditor-General, covering the period of 2010 to 2014. Of that number, the committee was able to consider 512 of those queries. In the course of that consideration, the committee was also able to, in 2010, recover or map out recovery sum of N1,967,146,030.72.
“And then, we also referred to the relevant authorities; that is, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission and the Nigeria Police, a total sum of N72,567,233,846.49 and $1,819,361 for recovery”.
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