The Federal Government has indicted the Central Bank of Nigeria over irregularities in the operations of the country's Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) account.The indictment was contained in the report credited to Auditor General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Samuel Ukurs who said in his 2010 report he sent to the National Assembly recently that beside the poor maintenance of the Consolidated Revenue Fund cash books that there were reversals in the CFR bank statements.'The cash book maintained for the recording of the transactions on the CFR account was observed not to be properly maintained. The AGF said that all balances were observed to be made in pencil making it renders it to unauthorised alterations and manipulations, just as relevant details of receipts and payments such as the bank credit slip numbers or treasury receipt numbers and mandate reference numbers were not stated on the cash book.'It was, therefore, difficult to post and confirm relevant receipts and payments to the treasury records. There was the risk that figures stated in the cash book may not correspond to that on the subsidiary records. No narration of the source of revenue and purpose of expenditure, beneficiaries in many cases.'The report continued: 'An audit examination of the cash book revealed that the cash book entries were made through verbatim copying of entries in the bank statement. This is purely improper and will not facilitate proper reconciliation of the cashbook with the bank statements. There is risk that errors and omissions made by the bank may go unnoticed and thereby transferred into the cashbook. The procedure of verbatim copying of entries does not comply with rules and regulations provided in the Financial Regulations FR716 and 307 stipulating guidelines for the reconciliation of bank statement with the cash book. Also, there were no daily and monthly balances, contrary to the requirement of the Financial Regulations [2009]. This also was not in line with the best practices. The cash book currently utilised for the recording of the CRF transactions appears to be inadequate and inappropriate. Columns were not sufficiently spaced to accommodate the large figures or amount. These made posting of large figures or amount cumbersome and illegible as most times they are squeezed into the available small space. The figures for CFR are in billions and trillions which make the present design not ideal.'According to the report, entries for disbursement or releases of fund were to be entered under the cash column instead of the bank. 'This appeared to be misleading as it may be implied that payments were made in cash, whereas all payments were made through mandates and direct releases through the bank. It said that the AGF also observed in the report that transfer entries and fund releases were made in the cash book without proper and adequate details of source of the transfer or where funds were being released.'There is risk that questionable transfers by the bank might be recorded without discovery as adequate information to confirm the genuiness of entry was not available. A proper balance statement as required by the Financial Regulations [2009] 805 as well as bank reconciliation statement reconciling the cash book and the bank statement as provided in Financial Regulation 806 were observed not prepared in respect of CRF Accountant and Cash book. Therefore, there exists the risk that error, commissions, fraudulent entries might not be uncovered where there was no effective monitoring through constant reconciliation of the cash book and bank statements,' he observed.
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