Aduragbemi Omiyale
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
Senior officials of the federal government in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have been advised to desist from the manipulation of the budget or risk being punished.
Speaking at a one-day forum in Abuja, the Director-General, Budget Office of the Federation (BOF), Mr Ben Akabueze, reminded the officials that budget is a matter of law and, therefore, infractions in this regard are punishable by law.
Business Post reports that the event, themed Transparency and Fiscal Discipline in Budget Implementation, was organised by BOF in partnership with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for Directors of Finance & Accounts and Internal Auditors of MDAs.
In his presentation, the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr Adolphus Aghughu, urged public office holders to cultivate a culture of accountability especially in the implementation of the 2021 budget and ensure that monies are expended according to appropriation.
He suggested that adequate measures should be put in place to block all leakages of corruption, expressing hopes that the participants will fully commit to making fiscal discipline in the discharge of fiscal responsibility.
On his part, the Chairman of ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, government officials to embrace transparency and fiscal discipline, emphasising that it was their duty to manage public finance and assets with high responsibility and integrity.
Speaking on the result of ICPC system study and reviews (SSRs) which aim at identifying, eliminating, preventing and obstructing opportunities for corruption, the ICPC Chairman stated that result of the 2019 exercise in 208 MDAs led to the “discovery of N31.8 billion personnel cost surpluses for 2017 and 2018, misapplication of N19.8 billion and N9.2 billion from personnel cost and capital fund respectively.”
As a result of the findings, N42 billion unspent surplus allocations from personnel cost for 2019 alone was blocked from possible abuse and pilfering mostly from health sector and some educational institution.
The focus on health and education sectors is because of the importance of their services which touch the lives of ordinary citizens and are critical to meeting any of the internationally recognized development goals.
“This implies that if we had covered the entire civil service structure of all MDAs the figures would have been staggering,” he said.
The ICPC boss revealed some of the findings from the educational institutions by the Commission which includes: padding of nominal rolls; warrant releases in excess of actual personnel cost needs; inadequate or non-budgetary allocation for outsourced services; widespread misuse of personnel cost allocation, amongst others.
Prof. Owasanoye highlighted some of the Commission’s findings in the pilot review of the Open Treasury Portal (OTP) launched in December 2019, to include: payments of advances beyond the approved limit of N200,000 to individuals’ accounts; payment to individual staff/accountants for disbursement to ad-hoc employees, and cash payments for staff DTA, transport, among others.
Arising from all these operations and findings, the Commission was able to restrain further diversion of such funds as cooperative and union dues, and these were retained within the system.
Additionally, the systems studies led to the mopping-up of about N189bn from personnel cost of MDAs through the issuing of a negative warrant from the Ministry of Finance.
He recommended that the blockage of unspent balances immediately after salaries are paid as well the prevention of unauthorized editing of payroll information data on the GIFMIS platform; and said banks should be directed to ensure that account names and numbers match before completing payment.
Earlier at the event, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Mr Aliyu Shinkafi, assured that the recommendations reached at the meeting would be followed to further enhance fiscal responsibility, especially in budget implementation.
