Posted by By Chiawo Nwankwo, Abuja on
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has criticised the House for failing to consider and adopt its reports on....
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has criticised the House for failing to consider and adopt its reports on investigations into financial irregularities in ministries and agencies.
The committee forwarded the reports to the House in September 2005.
It said the delay had affected its work adversely and would be taken up with the leadership when the House resumed sitting on August 8 from its annual vacation.
The committee made available the reports of its last meeting in Minna to our correspondent on Monday in Abuja.
"The issue of non-consideration and adoption of reports would be addressed with the seriousness it deserved on resumption of sitting," it said.
In its report, the committee queried the Nigerian Ports Authority over its operational cost of N189billion from 1998 to 2003 without details of the expenditure available; and National Assembly‘s approval.
The "NPA is to explain details of the N198billion operational expenditure and account for excess revenue of N19.8billion," it said
It also directed the agency to recover N11billion owed it within six months and forward evidence of the recovery to the committee. It is yet to comply with this directive.
However, the NPA had told the committee that the liability was a bad debt, and therefore, not recoverable.
Other cases were the N38billion tax owed by ministries and agencies, the N3.1billion illegal borrowing of the National Housing Fund by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria and reckless spending of N7.5billion belonging to the Federal Urban Mass Transport Agency.
The Federal Inland Revenue Service took up the matter with President Olusegun Obasanjo, who ordered that the deduction be made at source.
The Committee chaired by Mr. Adeyemi Oluwole had in its report, noted that "financial recklessness, theft, circumvention of financial regulations, destruction of records, fraud etc, are still rampart."