By Sadiq Umar – The Senate on Thursday directed the Auditor- General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura to issue clearance certificates to government agencies whose annual audited reports have been cleared.
The Senate accused the Auditor-General of gross display of unprofessionalism on the audited annual reports of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government (FG) from 2009 to 2014.
Mr. Ukura was slammed at the Public Accounts Committee probe session with Heads of MDAs on annual reports of their audited accounts from 2009 to 2014.
While the Auditor- General’s reports on the MDAs forwarded to the senate, indicted many of the agencies over non submission of their annual audited reports from 2009 to 2014, the agencies countered, by claiming submission of the reports with evidence.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in particular debunked the claim made in the report of the Auditor- General that it did not make available its audited reports of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 by declaring that its audited reports for the years listed, have long been submitted to the office of the Auditor- General based on queries raised to that effect.
The CBN Deputy – Governor (Operations), Bayo Adelabu who represented the Governor told the committee that in line with section 65 (3d) of the 1999 constitution as amended and Act of parliament of 2007, the apex bank submits its annual reports of any previous year on February 28 of every year.
According to him, the claim made in the report of the Auditor- General as regards annual report of CBN from 2010 to 2014, is false as the apex bank had submitted all the reports 2014 based on queries issued by the Auditor- General’s office.
The Auditor- General of the Federation, however, couldn’t counter this when asked by the committee to respond.
