AHEAD of fiscal 2012, the Executive and Legislative arms of government are tightening all loose ends to ensure smooth passage of next year's Appropriation Bill and reduce waste in the public sector.The Senate, which has pledged to reduce the yearly friction between the Executive and the National Assembly, has mandated its Committee on Appropriation to do all that is needed to achieve prompt passage of the income and expenditure document.The House of Representatives, which has however expressed concern over the declining impact of the Nigeria's audit system on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) has charged the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Samuel Okura, and the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Jonah Ogunniyi Otunla, to effect necessary changes in their operations to reverse the trend and avert the monumental increase in corruption that could result from such audit failures. The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), which is fighting corruption in the federal bureaucracy, has said it had saved N333.87 billion from wasteful spending brought about by over invoicing by contractors in collusion with public servants in six years. .Its Director-General, Emeka Eze, said the growing nature of greed and dishonesty amongst public servants who are failing to the temptations of contractors should be checked. .He said the agency's review of procurement processing between 2004 and 2010 had saved the nation huge amount of public funds. .At a crucial meeting by the House of Representatives' Committee on Public Accounts with the Auditor-General and Accountant-General in the National Assembly at the weekend to review the level of compliance of MDAs to the nation's auditing regulations, it was learnt that the treasury had suffered seriously because of the failure of revenue agencies to remit what they generated to the Federation Account in accordance with the Constitution.The committee was most disturbed about the findings that of the over 400 agencies and commissions of government, the Auditor-General had only submitted certified audit reports of 26 parastatals since 1999 to the National Assembly.It lamented that the audit report on the Federal Government accounts was yet to be submitted to the National Assembly even when 2011 was coming to an end. .Chairman of the committee, Solomon Adeola, who presided at the meeting, said the panel could no longer tolerate lukewarm attitudes to auditing by both officials in the Office of the Auditor-General and the MDAs.Adeola said: 'The Auditor-General has no excuse for failing to properly audit the accounts of ministries and agencies because the constitution has sufficiently empowered him to carry out such responsibilities. If you carry out your duties very well, we may not even have need to establish all these anti-graft agencies.'But when subjected to serious rebuke by the committee over his failures to carry out his functions as mandated by the constitution on the MDAs to curb corruption, Okura turned the heat on the National Assembly and declared that its failures to act on all the audit reports sent to it from the Office of the Auditor-General was responsible for the dwindling impact of audit system on MDAs.'Most of the time, those we audit do not take us seriously; they tell us to our faces that our report won't change things; that we may go ahead to write whatever report we can write about them but it would not affect them because the National Assembly has not been acting on audit reports,' Okura disclosed.He said that part of the problems militating against the operations of his office was the refusal of some agencies to submit audit reports to him as dictated by the constitution.Okura named the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) among the 41 government agencies and commissions that had not submitted any audit report to the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation since they were set up..'The problem is further compounded by the fact that we have no powers to sanction those agencies, who failed to transmit their audit reports to us,' he added. .In his testimonies before the committee, Otunla said his office had become helpless in checking against refusal by some agencies to transmit records of expenditure to his office because they were not on the list of those being funded by government..'Those agencies being funded by government could be sanctioned for not submitting records of their expenditure because we can simply refuse to release their allocations to them until they comply; but those agencies not funded by government cannot be sanctioned by us at all,' Otunla stated.The committee asked the Accountant-General to compile a list of all revenue agencies that had failed to remit them to the Federation Account for appropriate action..The committee head said: 'This issue of revenue generation and remittances must be taken very seriously because of the need to make funds available to government treasury for development purposes particularly at this moment that the 2012 budget is being prepared. So, we need the list fast. It is also too bad that these revenue generating agencies, which had refused to remit funds to the treasury, are also among the agencies that are defaulting in submitting audit reports to the Office of the Auditor-General. We will not allow this to continue.'When contacted, the Head, Media and Publicity Affairs of EFCC, Mr. Femi Babafemi, said:'The Act that established the EFCC in no way mandated us to render such account to the office in question. What the Act mandates us to do is to render accounts to the Senate Committee on Narcotics, Drug and Crime and its equivalent in the House of Representatives yearly and we are so dedicated to it. Every 30th of September, our account is rendered and we also defend our budget. We are not in any way violating any law.'In an interaction with journalists in Abuja yesterday, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Ahmed Macido, said there would be extensive consultation between the Legislature and the Executive so that whatever final figure that is forwarded to the National Assembly would reflect the outcome of the consultations and the Legislature would not have any cause to delay the passage of the budget..He disclosed that the issue was part of the agenda of the meeting, which President Goodluck Jonathan held recently with some committee chairmen in the National Assembly..Eze also told journalists that the government's procurement mechanism and the slow space on budget implementation by some MDAs was being addressed.According to him, some MDAs from the on-set, wilfully choose to work against the implementation of their budgets. He added that some MDAs were just advertising in October for projects whereas the budget was passed in last March. Some of those involved in this charade, Eze declared, were the losers in the old order, who were determining who gets what in their organisations. .Eze said: 'BPP is now a one-stop shop for all procurement of the Federal Government and we are introducing a new procurement technology e-procurement, that is devoid of human manipulation. This is aimed at addressing the issue of corruption.'In the January 2010 to March 2011 financial year for instance, a total of N216 billion was saved from all projects reviewed in that fiscal year. Between March 2011 and last September, close to N100 billion was saved from the review while more of such savings would be made as this financial year progresses.
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