Senate uncovers how over N28bn was paid to unnamed MDAs by Budget Office

Adekunle Adesuji, Abuja

Senate has uncovered how the budget Office of Federation (BOF), paid N28 billion excess from 2015 budget to some unnamed government agencies .

The Senate Public Accounts Committee relied on 2016 Auditor General Report to uncover excess payment of N28 billion to some agencies in the country.

However, in a written response of Budget Office which was obtained by our correspondent says, ” The details of the MDAs under reference have not been provided to enable us respond appropriately.

Our correspondent observed the query has been issued to Budget Office for the four years .

The meeting scheduled for the Budget Office by Uroghide led Committee to respond to the query raised by the Auditor General was not attended by the Officials of the Budget Office.

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. 290 Office of  the Auditor-General  for  the  Federation .

“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.”

It could be recalled that the Budget Office has been in the office from the past few days ranging from payment of N151 billion without approval of National Assembly, granting oral approval from the Service Wide vote to four MDAs without approval of Minister of Finance