House Of Reps Summon CBN Governor, Others Over N300bn Expenditure

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The House of Representatives has invited the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for questioning, in a bid to investigate various expenditure totaling N300bn. The House Committee on Public Accounts on various audit queries issued by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation also summoned Director-General, National Pension Commission, Aisha Dahir-Umar; and Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Muhammad Nami, Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan; Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami; and Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris.

The committee also summoned the Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers of Zenith Bank, EcoBank, FCMB, FirstBank, and United Bank of Africa over the queries.

Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Wole Oke issued the summon during the probe of various audit queries on the 'cash withheld' amounting to N182,077 billion in 2014.

Additional probe includes audit query on the N14.62 billion issued against Federal Inland Revenue Service; N12.639 billion audit issued against Head of Service Pension Office, as well as Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, Ministry of Communications, FIRS, Nigerian Board for Incubator Centre, National Gallery of Arts, among others.

The Committee also invited the Federal Ministry of Defence, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), National Sports Commission (NSC), among others over N425.127 million loans unaccounted for.

The Committee also summoned the Accountant General of the Federation over 83 queries in its 2014 annual audit report, relating to the "closing balance of the Pension Account in CBN - N13,943,576,960.25 and the opening balance of N26,726,085,500.60, as well as the N54,536,413,672.93 borrowed fund for PHCN staff as reviewed in the statement of affairs and consolidated transcript of account for pension arrears in 2014, and the bank statement, cash book and statement of affairs of IPPIS in CBN which were not produced for audit.

The Committee, however, stepped down the queries and ordered that CBN should make available the certificate showing the balance of the account as at 31st December 2014, and the bank statement of all the various sub-heads as at 31st December 2014, pursuant to Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Nigeria Constitution.