House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has blamed dearth of personnel and gross underfunding of the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAuGF) for the high rate of corrupt practices in Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government (MDAs).

Chaired by Mr Bamidele Salam, the committee, at the budget defence session with the Auditor General for the Federation, Shaakaa Kanyitor Chira, expressed concern that pervasive corruption was depriving government of much needed revenue to function and deliver the needed development in the country.

The Osun-born lawmaker maintained that there were a lot of money that ought to accrue to government had been stolen as a result of weaknesses in our accounting, auditing and weaknesses in general financial management architecture.

Stressing the need for the Auditor General to expand its coverage of MDAs to block leakages and boost revenue generation, he said it’s unfortunate that the OAuGF, mandated to audit almost 1,000 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government, would perform periodic audits, appoint auditors for those that they are not going to audit directly is being limited by personnel and budgetary constraints.

Salam pledged to work in concert with relevant committees of the House to make the work of the Auditor General to be more impactful and result-oriented.

“We believe very strongly that if the Auditor General’s office is well-funded, if the Auditor General’s office is well-staffed, cases of corruption will be minimised drastically in Nigeria. We will be preventing corruption rather than fighting corruption after it happens. And that is the direction that we are looking into.

“The implementation of the capital component of the 2024 budget has not been encouraging. We have expressed this observation when we had a meeting with the Accountant General of the Federation about a week ago, that we think that there is a need for our government to work more on the revenue side of budgets in a manner that will make us less dependent on borrowing. And the only way we can do that, the first of the options we have as a country, is to block loopholes.”