MDAs’ squandering of N3.8trn

FOR decades, as confirmed by Auditor-General reports, the country’s federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have played ping pong with public funds. But even going by what has tended to be the norm in their operations, the recent revelation by the Senate that they had misused the N3.8 trillion they received from the contigency funds in the annual budgets called Service Wide Votes in four years takes grand larceny to yet another level entirely. According to the Senate Public Accounts Committee which probed the disbursement of N5 trillion from the Service Wide Votes to more than 200 government agencies between 2017 and 2021, many agencies collected funds from the Service Wide Votes without recourse to the National Assembly committees mandated by law to oversee their operations. The report said that some of the MDAs did not make formal requests for the money sent to them by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and that even where President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval was sought and obtained, they expended the resources on unrelated expenditure. Besides, some MDAs collected funds for projects already captured in the Appropriation Acts during the four years under reference. Interestingly, although the committee chaired by Senator Matthew Urhoghide invited 207 government agencies for the investigation, only 119 agencies honoured its invitation.

The agencies in question include the  Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and the Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Transportation, Health, Works and Housing, Information and Culture, Mines and Steal Development, Police Affairs, Defence, Youths and Sports, Petroleum and Aviation. Others are the State House, Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA), Budget Office, Presidential Fleet, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Air Force, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), National Agency for Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA), National Examination Council (NECO), Debt Management Office (DMO), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Presidential Amnesty Programme, National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA), National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), North East Development Commission (NEDC) and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), among others.

The report said: “Hundreds of billions of naira were claimed to have been used for the purposes of paying salary shortfalls whereas such agencies had already collected appropriation for personnel emolument and were on the IPPIS platform. In some instances, huge sums of money were thrown at agencies which they did not apply for/or were not in the know of where the money came from and for what purpose. The IPPIS intervention towards meeting insufficiencies or shortfalls in personnel costs has been bastardized, with huge sums of money needing legislative scrutiny. Most of the MDAs involved in the period under review deliberately avoided the Committee’s invitation for appearance and refused to make submissions, perhaps for lack of satisfactory explanations on the utilisation of the funds released to them.”

Adopting the committee’s recommendations, the Senate urged the executive arm of government to use the supplementary budget approach to meet emergencies instead of the Service Wide Votes, which it said amounted to an affront and erosion of the approval powers of the National Assembly. It recommended that the Auditor-General for the Federation should be given full access by the Accountant-General and other MDAs to audit Service Wide Votes expenditures annually and report to the National Assembly. It also called for in-depth investigation into the operations of IPPIS to stem the rising cases of irregularities in the system.

To all intents and purposes, this report by the outgone 9th Senate is distressing, particularly as it constitutes an indictment on the investigating body itself. The fact that the Red Chamber continued to approve MDA budgets even after they had violated nearly all the rules in the statute books is mindboggling, as is the fact that it failed to act when the heads of agencies to which it extended invitations failed to honour parliamentary summons. In any case, there was nothing stopping it from making its findings available to the Nigeria Police after all efforts to get the Presidency to act on its findings failed. The practice of reporting erring MDAs to the presidency and thereafter going to sleep is simply gross. At the heart of the investigation was the issue of misuse and theft of public funds, and no effort to punish the perpetrators of the monumental sleaze should have been spared. Indeed, MDAs feeding fat on public funds while the vast majority of Nigerians on whose behalf they (MDAs) are supposed to be working literally experience horror on a daily basis, trapped in appalling economic conditions, sounds like treason.

The report of the Senate Public Accounts Committee should be a cause for concern for all Nigerians as it speaks to the routine, but monumental, squandering of resources by government officials even as they continue to complain of inadequate resources for development.  Government is a deliberate structure set up by and for the society with strict rules and regulations about its operations. The idea of unregulated and unmonitored decision-making on expenditure is an anathema, a gross violation of processes. Indeed, MDAs turning that kind of gross behaviour into a pastime is an indictment on the whole apparatus of government given that there ought to be clear punishment for aberrations and departures from rules.

Exposing the squandering of resources cannot be the end of the matter. We expect that clear and decisive efforts will be made to get to the roots of this anomaly, identify and block the loopholes, and adequately punish the perpetrators. The Nigerian public must be tired of all of the pretence and half-hearted exposures of corruption instead of sincere efforts that could be counted upon to effect positive changes. We hope that with a new government in place, there will be decisive and transparent action on this Senate report, with all those implicated in the squandering of resources brought to book.