The fire in AGF’s office

LAST Wednesday’s fire outbreak at the Treasury House, a building housing the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), has understandably triggered controversy. The office is home to the records of revenue generation and disbursements among the three tiers of governments. It archives the government’s fiscal accountability and transparency monitoring platform (Treasury Single Account)and, in addition, stocks all records of domestic and foreign indebtedness by the country’s 36 states. Although officials of the Federal Fire Service and National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) were able to put out the fire after about an hour, there was widespread suspicion among Nigerians that it was the product of the government’s plan to conceal fraud and deceive the public.

Reacting to the incident, the Minister of State for Budget and Planning, Clem Agba, said the fire did not destroy any record. Speaking with journalists after inspecting the affected offices in Abuja, Agba said he and his boss were yet to take an inventory of what was destroyed in the fire, but that all of the government’s financial transactions were intact. According to him, the fire was caused by a spark in one of the air conditioners on the building’s fourth floor. He said: “As a government I want to assure you that our records are intact. A few documents were burnt, we haven’t started recovery to check what actually got burnt, but all our financial transactions are intact. We would be doing a full-scale investigation using the right professionals to determine exactly what happened.” Also speaking on the incident, the AGF, Ahmed Idris, reiterated Agba’s position, saying: “For emphasis, our data Centre is intact, no harm in any way except for the cooling system which we are now working hard to put back to operation.” He attributed the fire to an electrical malfunction of the complex cooling system in the office housing some capital account documents.

Similarly, the chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, said that the fire was put out of the only office it affected in time, and stopped from spreading to other offices on the fourth floor of the massive edifice housing over 1,800 staff. Adeola said: “I am happy to report that irreparable damage was not done to the building and, more importantly, the documents burnt are easily retrievable as the main server of the office was not affected, and only hard copies of some capital projects which are online real-time were affected.” He called for the provision of fire trucks for the office of the Accountant General to complement a fire station under construction in the complex.

Naturally, though, the incident sparked calls on the Federal Government to launch an investigation. For instance, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said there must be a full-scale probe into the circumstances surrounding the inferno, given its uncanny timing and the significance of the offices involved. It expressed shock that the incident came on the heels of its heightened calls for a forensic audit into the hazy oil subsidy regime of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. Similarly, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) said a forensic investigation by independent criminal forensic scientists would ascertain the real motives or otherwise behind the incident barely 24 hours after the Senate uncovered an alleged monumental heist in the Federal Government’s schools feeding programmes. In a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said the incident was ‘too coincidental’, coming at a time of mounting accusations of fraud and failure by the Federal Government to account for how the billions budgeted for the payment of N20,000 COVID-19 palliatives to poor Nigerians were spent.

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In our view, the scepticism with which the government’s account of the fire outbreak has been received by a large section of the populace is rooted in the dysfunctional system in the country where government business is more often than not shrouded in secrecy, and reeks of sabotage. However, regardless of the public scepticism, there is a need for those manning critical offices of government to ensure that electrical installations are handled professionally, and that fire fighting mechanisms are effective. In this regard, it is far from cheering that it took about an hour to contain the outbreak under reference. Nevertheless, the fact that the military and other security agencies assisted the Federal Fire Service in putting out the fire is worthy of applause. It has always been our view that organs of the government need to collaborate where necessary and, in this instance, it is worthy of note that such collaboration helped in saving lives and properties.

We are firmly behind the calls for a probe of the incident. It needs to be independently investigated, with the outcome made public in record time. Needless to say, governance in the country needs to benefit from greater transparency and accountability. Finally, if it is established that there was any element of sabotage behind the fire outbreak, then the perpetrators and their collaborators should be unmasked and given their just deserts. Happily, the Federal Government has said there will be a probe of the incident.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE