The Senate Committee on Public Accounts, led by Senator Ahmed Wadada Aliyu (SDP, Nasarawa West), has vowed to sustain queries raised by the Auditor General for the Federation against the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and other agencies.
The committee chairman, Senator Aliyu, disclosed this on Tuesday, saying that FIRS, Nigeria Police Force, NNPCL and 12 others shunned the committee’s invitation in defiance of the provision of oversight function.
According to him: “Since heads of the affected agencies refused to respond to queries raised against them in the 2019 audit report after several opportunities offered to do so, reports will be forwarded to the Committee of the Whole.”
Expressing anger at the erring heads of agencies, Wadada said their actions are detrimental to the aspirations and goals of the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government.
The lawmaker said shunning committee invitations has become a habit of some agencies of government and warned that the 10th Senate will not tolerate that going forward.
He disclosed more erring agencies including the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (formerly DPR) and Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.
Others are FCT Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Defence, and Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited.
Aliyu said further: “It is worthy to state that the committee commenced the consideration of the audit report in October 2023, with a view to presenting its report to the plenary.
“However, some agencies have wilfully failed to honour invitations to defend their written responses to the audit queries as submitted to the Committee Secretariat.”