Senate berates NNPCL, FIRS, police, others for ignoring audit report queries

The Senate Panel on Public Accounts on Tuesday berated the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), and 12 others over their failure to respond to queries raised against them in the 2019 Audit Report.

The Chairman of the panel, Senator Ahmed Wadada Aliyu (SDP Nasarawa West), while expressing his disappointment, said that since the heads of the affected agencies refused to respond to the queries raised against them in the 2019 Audit Report after several opportunities to do so, going forward, any agency that refuses to honour invitations to defend queries against it will have its queries sustained and reported to the Senate Plenary by the committee.

He added that the attitude of the affected public agencies in persistently refusing to respond to queries in the audit report was frustrating and working against the aspirations and goals of the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government.

According to him, apart from NNPCL, FIRS, and the Police, other heads of agencies who declined to honour the committee’s invitations to respond to queries over time included the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (formerly DPR), and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade & Investment.

Others are the FCT Internal Revenue Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Defence, and Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited, etc.

He said, “It is worthy to state that the Committee commenced the consideration of the Audit Report in October 2023, with a view to presenting its report to the Plenary.

“However, some agencies have willfully failed to honour invitations to defend their written responses to the audit queries as submitted to the Committee Secretariat.

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“Besides the demand for submission of written responses to audit queries, part of the Committee’s rules of engagement requires that Accounting Officers attend the Committee’s Public Hearing to respond to questions arising from the analysis of their submissions, which in turn forms a basis for informed decisions on the matter by the Committee.

“The desire of the Public Accounts Committee to timely discharge its constitutional and legislative function is being hindered by the evasive and negative actions of some CEOs or accounting officers of the concerned MDAs.

“The Committee is very displeased with the attitude of foot-dragging by agencies that are by law expected to respond to parliamentary invitations and account for their actions.

“The Committee has, over time, extended invitations to those agencies, providing them ample opportunities to defend their queries, but for reasons best known to them, these agencies have chosen to disregard the invitations.

“It is on this note that we, as a Committee, have resolved that going forward, the Senate Public Accounts Committee will go ahead to consider their audit queries as contained in the Auditor-General’s Annual Report and any MDA that henceforth fails to honour invitations to respond and present its defence, the Committee will adopt the position of the Auditor.

“Also, this resolution would be added to our rules of engagement if MDAs fail to improve their attendance to our invitations.”

He, however, stated that the Committee is not in doubt of the commitment of the present administration under President Tinubu to make Nigeria better, but with the attitude of the aforementioned Chief Executives, that will not be achievable unless and until we all do the needful.”