The Senate has threatened ministries, departments, agencies, and MDAs of the federal government with zero allocation in the 2025 fiscal year if they fail to appear before it to scrutinize records of expenditures made from 2024 appropriations.
It also took a swipe at discrepancies in Nigeria’s revenue generation and expenditure tracking and called for improved synergy between the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and the legislative body.
Senators raised these and others yesterday during an investigative hearing by the Senate Committee on Finance, led by Senator Sani Musa, that focused on the remittance of internally generated revenue, fiscal accountability, and the overall state of the country’s financial management system.
Members of the committee who spoke during the session with the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein and her team, flayed the level of discrepancies observed in the records books of some of the agencies.
In his opening remarks, Senator Musa emphasized the importance of addressing financial inconsistencies across government agencies, stating that these issues undermined transparency and accountability in governance.
Specifically, he warned that any agency that failed to appear before the committee risked zero allocation for 2025 fiscal year.
“This performance index exercise on the various MDAs is preparatory to the 2025 budget. Any agency that failed to appear before this committee upon invitation risks zero allocation in the 2025 budget because records of how appropriations made for 2024 are expended must be provided with facts and figures,’’ he said.
The lawmaker, who noted the inability to readily access accurate data on the funds available to the federation, a gap that impairs effective oversight and policymaking, said: “We should be able to determine, at any point, the exact state of revenues collected, how they’ve been disposed off, and what has been allocated to various accounts. Unfortunately, that is not the case today.”.
Key areas of concern include the discrepancies in reports from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL and the federation account, the dividends received from LNG operations, and other significant variances.
The committee also underscored the need for clarity on loans, grants, and other financial inflows managed by the government.
The Accountant General of the Federation had before the threat, presented a summary of internally generated revenue for the federal government up to September 2024 as she reported an N8 billion capital allocation for 2024, yet only N2.9 billion (25%) had been released for project execution.
Lawmakers noted that the unutilized funds obstructed other agencies from accessing necessary resources, further exacerbating delays across the board and policy of centralizing all payments in the Accountant General’s office was heavily criticized for creating bureaucratic bottlenecks.
They pointed out that this system often resulted in MDAs waiting months for payment after projects had been executed, causing delays in government operations and public projects.