By Fatima Saka
The House of Representative, Committee on Public Petition on Thursday Urged 256 Ministries, Departments and Agencies to appear before the house over a short budget of 284.3b in the year 2020 to offer explanation.
The house uncensored that MDA’s has over short their budget illegally, thereby they should appear before the committee for further investigation.
The Chairman Committee on Public Petition, Hon Bamidele Salam, made this call as motions were moved by other members of the committee during an interactive session with the Account general of the federation and Auditor general of the federation, at the National Assembly Complex in Abuja.
The house also discovered that the short of budget is being manipulated, or misappropriation of funds by service wide votes by the national assembly in 2020, and called for Investigation the spending by the MDA’s.
The parliament hereby extended investigation from the year 2020 to 2022, to also investigate their lines of budget through their sources, before having access to the service wide votes.
Giving an explanation of the service wide votes, Chairman Committee on Public Petition, said that the service wide votes are appropriated by the national assembly and the president is induced with the power to approve when there are any requests by any agencies for monies to be released from the service wide votes to solve particular problems.
“Although, the service wide votes is not a slouch funds, it’s also governance by rule’s which apportions to government circulars , the government regulars that indicate how the service wide votes can be applied for and what they can cover in the expenditures pattern.”
Following the process and procedures of applying for the service wide votes, Hon Bamidele Salam said firstly, “If the service wide votes are taken for a particular purpose, it must be used for that purpose. Making it clear to parliament of the purpose of the funds got approval for the made issues.
Secondly, “the president has the power to approve services wide votes and appropriation by the national assembly, also the national assembly has the power to ask questions on the application of the funds to be sure that they are confirmed through all the rules and regulations concerning public expenditures.
The Account general of the federation, also revealed that over 300 MDA’s are not complying with the constitution of submitting their audits reports
The house further wants to know to what extent the auditor general is checking the abuses of the reports by these MDA’s.
