While commenting on the 2021 budget defense of the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation, the Chairman, Senate Public Affairs Committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide challenged the acting Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Adolphus Aghughu to focus more on the financial transactions of big revenue generating agencies instead of beaming searchlights only on small agencies.
Senator Urhoghide specifically urged the AuGF to ensure a holistic and comprehensive auditing of the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Nigerian Port Plc and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Authority, among others.
According to him, AuGF claims that he auditing the account of the federation and he won’t touch the accounts of the NNPC, NPA, NIMASA, among others. He noted that since 2015, the big spenders have been removed from the watch list and the focus shifted on the smaller agencies.
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“We don’t want to be seeing these smaller agencies of government that you are focusing on because they can’t settle well. We are tired of seeing audit queries involving municipal councils leaving behind the big agencies.” He said.
The SPAC boss stated that his committee would carry out further works on what the AuGF was doing regarding the Bureau of Public Procurement and that the scope as the committee wants to look at the revenue and expenditure profile, the budget and particularly the Internally Generated Revenue.
Urhoghide therefore advised the AuGF to be proactive instead of waiting for corrupt activities to occur before taking action saying, “You should undertake performance audit at every stage of construction. You shouldn’t wait till the project is completed before raising the alarm and allow EFCC to step in and collect huge sums to fight corruption.
He also told the AuGF to shun internal wrangling and tribal conflict that could affect their operations negatively and threatened that the Senate might not hesitate to advertise the office of the AuGF if the internal hostilities continued.
“People can apply from within or outside and we could employ anybody from the office or outside the office.” He concluded.
