Ministry of Finance Receives Audit Query Over N17 Billion Unapproved Spending

The Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning has been reprimanded over an unapproved N17 billion from the Sovereign Wealth Fund, SWF under its control between 2016 and 2019.

The Nigerian House of Representatives on Thursday requested that the finance ministry present evidence of approval for the amount spent from the SWF.

The federal lawmakers described the over N17 billion as too enormous to be overlooked, as they called for a probe into the expenditure.

Investors King gathered that the audit query served to the ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning shows that funds unaccountable for four years include: N15 billion in 2016, N1.5 billion in 2017, N550 million in 2018 and N512 million in 2019.

After the audit query issued by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation to the finance ministry, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, Oluwole Oke, ordered an investigative hearing on the matter.

Representatives of the offices of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Auditor-General of the Federation were present at the hearing as the finance ministry stated that part of the alleged unaccountable fund was received and spent while it denied that it received others.

Thereafter, the committee directed the ministry to look into the figures with the two offices for a balanced account.

Explaining how the money was spent, the Director of Finance, Aliyu Ahmed, stated that a larger part of the funds was spent on Nigeria’s regular subscription fees to the international bodies it belonged to.

He said, “The ministry makes naira available to the CBN, who in turn pay these subscriptions in hard currencies. Also different levels of Nigerian delegation starting from presidential are sponsored to international conferences, meetings and seminars by the ministry. Many of these trips are expensive and are not captured in the ministry’s annual budgetary provisions.”

In his response, the Committee Chairman faulted the ministry’s explanation, describing it as ‘abstract and vague.’

Following the agreement of the ministry of finance to reconcile figures with the two offices concerned, the lawmakers approved a two-week duration to liaise with the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Auditor-General of the Federation to come up with a detailed report and documentary evidence of expenditure as requested.