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The Senate has accused the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) of making excess payments up to the tune of N28 billion to some unnamed government agencies. The sum, according to the Senate, was outside the statutory allocations approved for the agencies in the national budget for 2015 fiscal year.
The Senate Public Accounts Committee, which exposed the “suspicious” payments, said it relied on the Auditor General’s Report 2016. It had therefore, queried the BOF on the transactions with a view to getting explanations.
The query reads: “The sum of N28,880,533,107.00 (Twenty-eight billion, eight hundred and eighty million, five hundred and thirty-three thousand, one hundred and seven naira) was paid to some MDAs as advance payment from their approved budgets in 2015.
“There was no evidence to show that these advances were recovered from the subsequent payments made to these MDAs, resulting in excess releases to the benefiting MDAs, above their appropriated amounts. Furthermore, there was no evidence of any supplementary budgetary allocation from the National Assembly.
“The Director-General was requested to recover these advances from the benefiting MDAs from subsequent payments due to them and show evidence of supplementary approval from the National Assembly for the sum of N28,880,533,107.00 released as advances. Evidence of compliance should be furnished for verification.”
The query was issued to the BOF in the 2016 Audit Report, but was yet to be answered five years later. This prompted the Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, Sen. Matthew Uroghide to reopen the issue.
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A meeting scheduled by the committee for the BOF to respond to the query raised by the Auditor General was not attended by officials of the agency which made the payments.
However, in a written response to the committee, the BOF claimed that it had not been able to respond to the query because the details of the MDAs which allegedly received the excess payments have not been provided to it.
“The details of the MDAs under reference have not been provided to enable us to respond appropriately,” the BOF wrote.
