The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) has disclosed that it would launch an investigation into the disbursement and expenditure of service-wide votes from 2008 to date to agencies under the Presidency by the Budget Office later this week.
Rep. Adeola Solomon Olamilekan (APC, Lagos), who is chairman of the committee made this known at the weekend.
According to the lawmaker, the investigation has become necessary in order to find out how the funds were disbursed and utilized.
It would be recalled that the national budgets from 2008 to date under late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua down to President Goodluck Jonathan, were at over N4 trillion annually with service-wide votes accounting for about 40 per cent of the budget every year.
But the Public Accounts Committee chairman expressed surprise that the Auditor General’s office was still experiencing paucity of funds to carry out audit of government accounts, pointing out that there have been abundant sums of money extracted from the budget every year to cover for such services.
“We are going to investigate the Budget Office on Service-wide votes for 5 years especially the year 2011; how much was spent, how much was the expenditure for that year and all these years.
“40 per cent of the nation’s budgets which amounted to about N1.6trillion went for service-wide votes and nothing went to the Auditor General of the Federation. Rather, the budget office has been paying hired auditors to audit the service-wide vote accounts,” Mr. Olamilekan said.
-Daily Trust
