Group urges Buhari to sign Nigeria’s audit law

President Muhammadu Buhari has been called upon to pass the Audit Law that was submitted by the Senate in January 2019, to check the mismanagement of funds by Ministries, Departments, and Agencies in the country.

Segun Elemo, the director of Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI) made this call at an interactive session organised by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) in Lagos on Wednesday.

“If you don’t enact an Audit Law, you will not empower the office of the auditor general, and this issue about the accountant general submitting the year-end financial statement will continue,” he said.

“Because there is no delegation of responsibility. So, everybody is just taking advantage of the gap in the system. So, what will it take for the federal government to enact the law?”

According to Mr Elemo, if the audit law is passed, it would aid the fight against corruption and also promote transparency and accountability among public office holders.

He added that the law will provide for the timely publication of audit reports.

“International best practices allow for audit reports to be published at most 18 months after the end of the financial year,” he said.

“Cross-cutting issues”

Mr Elemo, while doing a review of SERAP’s findings in the 2018 audit report, said that 79 agencies of government had a total budget of N2.1 trillion.

“The total funds released to them is N831 billion. And 617 (billion) was unaccounted for,” he said.

He identified six “cross-cutting issues” in the audit report – unretired advances, store items not taken on store charge, and circumvention of the procurement procedure.

Others are irregularities in payment and expenditure, which include unauthorised foreign trips, failure in remittance of revenue, and irregularities in contract award, execution, and payment.

“Of all the six crossing issues, failure in remittance of revenue took about N54 billion. What that means is that MDA’s were generating revenue and they did not remit to the federation account,” he explained.

“Three issues we have in Nigeria today are revenue issues, we have a debt crisis even though the…and development deficit.”

“There is no way you want to solve the debt crisis and development deficit without talking about revenue. And failure in remittance of revenue grew by 164 per cent.

“When you look at what happened in 2017 and 2018, there was a growth of 164 per cent. It means that in 2017, failure in remittance of revenue was just N20 billion. By 2018, failure in remittance of revenue to the federation account has grown to N54 billion. And we are saying that there is no money to implement the budget.”

In his contribution, a federal Lawmaker from Osun State, Busayo Oluwole-Oke, called for the enforcement of the law to actualise transparency and accountability and advocated for creating sanctions for erring public office holders.

Recommendations

In the book unveiled by the advocacy group, they recommended that the federal government immediately impose stringent measures, including “withholding financial releases and sanctioning the Chief Executive Officer of MDAS implicated in cases of corruption within their ministries, departments, and agenda.”

“Establish an independent commission of inquiry with subpoena power to conduct a transparent, comprehensive, and impartial investigation into

systemic corruption within Ministries, Departments and Agencies [MDAs).”

SERAP also urged the apex government to mandate all heads of MDAs to declare their assets publicly.

The group urged the national assembly to urgently hold a public hearing on reports of corruption identified in the Auditor-General reports since 2013 and “to exercise its constitutional oversight roles to examine the Auditor-General reports and to hold the government President Muhammadu Buhari to account for persistent failure to address reports of corruption within MDAs that the Auditor-General has consistently documented;

“Promptly pass the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the Whistle-blowers Bill, and the Witness Protection Bill among others, to improve transparency and accountability and reduce reports of corruption within MDAs.”