Budget Office blew N4.9bn contingency cash –Reps

[SunNews]

From Iheanacho Nwosu, Abuja

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) yesterday accused the Budget Office of  misusing the Federal Government's contingency fund totaling N4.9billion .

It alleged that the Budget Office recklessly disbursed the staggering sum even as it accused it of expending the money on trivialities .

Following the development, the committee headed by Hon. Solomon Adeola, said it  may consider the option of seeking  the scrapping of the fund. The account, it  said, has become  a conduit pipe through which  billions of naira were being siphoned under the guise of contingency expenditure.

PAC disclosed this when the Budget Office led by its Director-General, Mr Bright Okogwu, appeared before it. The office was summoned by the lawmakers over the Accountant-General Report which queried it on a number of disbursements. Giving details of how the funds were disbursed, the committee frowned at the use of N1.2 billion for the presidential projects' assessment committee for  inspection within three months.

It also lampooned the Budget Office for the payment of N377 million as outstanding liabilities, N410 million for capacity building on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, contribution of $775,000 to ECOWAS, N59.9 million cost of production and circulation of Servant Leader news magazine, N300 million for the 2010 World Cup, N75 million for lobbying for the Federal Government in Washington DC, U.S. and payment of another N257 million consultancy fees on behalf of the NNPC.

Lamenting what he called large-scale wastage in the system, Hon. Adeola praised  the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation for exposing the gross misapplication of the contingency fund by the Budget Office over the years.

The committee chairman  directed Mr. Okogwu to, within one week, furnish the PAC with  documents on the expenditure, the names of all the ministries and agencies that benefited from the fund and the amounts involved, the approving authority, the names of the N1.2 billion beneficiaries spent on projects' inspection and the identity of the person involved in lobbying for Nigeria  abroad.

Apart from that,  Adeola announced that the committee would check the budgets of all the agencies and ministries  that benefitted from the funds . He explained that the move was to ascertain if such transactions were not provided for in their own budgets, insisting that all the 10 items were not as important as to put them in contingency votes.

However, while defending the spending, Mr Okogwu explained that most of them were duly approved by the Presidency and appealed to the committee not to scrap the vote because of its importance during emergencies.

Via: Sun News Online