MDAs given December 31 to submit stand-alone financial statements

•FG moves to reverse N39tr negative assets
Ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) have been given up till December 31 to submit their stand-alone 2024 financial statements. The Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, said this on Tuesday at a sensitisation workshop on the national assets register. The event also focused on the strategic importance of legacy asset rendition in the Implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) held in Abuja.

The AGF warned that there would be sanctions for an MDA that fails to comply with the directive. She also said the Federal Government is determined to reverse the trend of rising negative assets.

The workshop was organised by the OAGF for directors of finance, internal audit and heads of accounts of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Madein said the reason it appeared that Nigeria has more liabilities than assets is because the country has not been able to collate, evaluate and place value on the assets of the federal government. She said Nigeria adopted IPSAS accrual accounting in January 2016 but that many legacy assets have yet to be recognised, measured and uploaded.

“Consequently, we still have huge negative net assets in our 2021 consolidated financial statements, which stood at N39 trillion,” she said. Madein said the strategic importance of legacy asset rendition could not be overstated even as the pace of rendition by MDAs has been disappointingly slow.

“This delay hampers the timeliness and accuracy of the consolidated financial statements and significantly impacts our ability to address the net asset deficit as expected,” she noted.

She said the federal government has decided to build a national asset register (NAR) that will capture all the assets owned by the government, including buildings, land, roads constructed by the government, hospitals, schools and equipment.

“We need to take a good inventory of these assets. The financial statement the federal government gives must be accurate, comparable and useful,” she said, adding that the financial statement needs to be useful because donor groups, investors and other international organisations that are interested in the Nigerian economy need to see the value of the country.

She said: “Legacy asset management represents a pivotal tool for strengthening our fiscal position and alleviating our budgetary pressures. By systematically cataloguing and valuing legacy assets, MDAs can unlock substantial value that would otherwise remain dormant.”

She warned that her office would initiate measures to enforce compliance, adding that sanctions would be applied to non-complying MDAs that continue to delay the critical renditions.

The AGF gave a deadline of December 31 for all MDAs to submit their standalone financial statements, which are in three parts – statement of financial position, statement of financial performance and cash flow statement.

“We need that so that by the time we will be presenting the federal government account for 2024 we will be able to shift from a financial statement that we always get negative assets to one that will have positive assets, meaning that our assets will be over and above our liabilities,” she said.