The Senate has berated the Auditor General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura, accusing him of incompetence and negligence of duties.
The Senate also directed the top official to issue clearance certificates to government agencies whose annual audited reports had been cleared.
The Senate said these through its Committee on Public Accounts at a hearing on Thursday with 22 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) invited to defend their audited annual reports from 2009 to 2014.
This followed disagreements between the Auditor General and some MDAs which provided evidence of audited annual reports from 2009 to 2014 contrary to claims of the former.
The Auditor- General’s reports on the MDAs forwarded to the senate had indicted many of the agencies of non-submission of their annual audited reports from 2009 to 2014.
However, some of the agencies countered the claim and presented their reports to the senate with evidence of submission to the AGF.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) denied the claim made in the report of the Auditor- General that it did not make available its audited reports of 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
The bank’s Deputy – Governor (Operations), Bayo Adelabu who represented the Governor told the committee that the CBN submits the annual report of the previous year on February 28 of the fiscal year.
According to him, the claim made in the report of the Auditor- General as regards annual report of CBN from 2010 to 2014 was incorrect as the apex bank had submitted all its reports.
Other MDAs which denied the allegations of the Auditor General include the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Nigerian Port Authority and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND).
Incidentally, the AGF who was represented by a Director in his office, Isaac Dada, could not dispute the counter claims of the MDAs.
According to him, reports forwarded to the Senate on annual reports of various government agencies were based on available documents and findings made.
Chairman of the Committee, Andy Uba (PDP, Anambra) at that point berated the representative of the AGF and questioned the queries submitted by his office.
He said: “Your boss is fond of declaring that his office had completed audited work on annual reports of the MDAs and always alleging that it is the National Assembly that is not working.
“He is not here today for the needed harmonization of these conflicting reports and even you that is here, is not competent going by your responses so far.”
He therefore directed that clearance certificates be issued to agencies whose annual reports have been cleared up to 2014 before the next meeting with the committee.
A member of the committee, Sen. Akpan Bassey ( PDP Akwa – Ibom), said the AGF was avoiding the meeting because of the ‘wishy washy’ reports he submitted. OrderPaperng.
