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The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun was on the hot seat yesterday as the House of Representatives ad-hoc panel grilled her for approving the sum of N540 million as consultancy fee for the audit of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
The panel, headed by Abubakar Nuhu Danburam (APC, Kano), raised eyebrows on why the minister could approve such “huge amount” for the Accountant General of the Federation (AG), Ahmed Idris, to engage the consultants.
In response, Adeosun said they were certain that government monies trapped in various accounts hence she had to hire the consultants.
According to her, one of the consultants recovered the sum of N1.6 billion from a single branch of a bank.
She also stated that they discovered arbitrary bank charges of over N600 moth in the previous month
The minister said the Auditor General’s office carries out statutory audits of governments accounts, while the consultants engaged were to conduct recovery audit.
Consequently, Members of the panel raised concerns over the way the TSA was being run and government finances collected.
They insisted there were still leakages in the activities of the TSA at a meeting in Abuja.
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“Why are we wasting money to engage consultants when we have the office of the Auditor General of the Federation?” Danburam asked.
“What’s the rationale behind spending N540m on consultancy alone? We’re talking about saving costs of governance, but I think this is simply a waste,” he insisted.
He noted that recovery could only be done when it is established that there was indeed sums of money to be recovered.
Currently, the Panel’s decision on the matter is being awaited.
Recall that, recently, the Finance Minister was fingered in a 10 billion Naira alleged scam by Premium Times, an online media.
The scam, as alleged by Premium Times, also involved the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara.
