The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAGF) has expressed concern over the lack of financial and administrative autonomy by subnational governments to effectively carry out performance audits of government programmes and activities.

According to the office, performance audit requires specialised skills, hence the need for more funds to employ skilled personnel to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the audit reports.

A performance auditor, Stephen Uwamah, who represented the Director of Audit Overseeing the OAGF raised the concern, yesterday, in Abuja at the commissioning of Performance Audit Manuals and a five-day workshop on performance auditing for subnational supreme audit institutions for Anambra, Delta, Ekiti, Kaduna and Yobe State.

According to him, performance audits are very expensive but unfortunately, most states and even the federal government do not have the financial and administrative autonomy that is required.

Uwamah said: “Supreme audit institutions in other countries have financial autonomy such that when they receive money they can use it to employ staff from various disciplines because performance audits cut across various disciplines.”

He lamented that a lot of audit institutions are not producing reports due to lack of funds.
While explaining that performance audit is a veritable instrument for achieving good governance at the subnational level, he said the process is the type of audit of economy, efficiency and effectiveness.

He called on the government to implement recommendations from the financial, compliance and performance audit reports, saying it is one thing to come up with audit reports but another for the recommendations to be adopted.

The Executive Director of Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLS I), Segun Elemo, stated that with support from the Macarthur Foundation, the organisation is supporting five states – Ekiti, Anambra, Delta, Kaduna and Yobe – to strengthen public audit.