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Senate threatens to withhold funding from 100 government departments if they don’t respond to audit questions

Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies that ignore audit requests from the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAGF) would receive zero allocation.

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About 100 agencies did not respond to questions, which led Mathew Uroghide, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, to call for sanctions against the at-fault organizations.

According to Uroghide, the sanction is the zero allocation, and there shouldn’t be any more allocations if the affected agencies can’t account for the money that was given to them.

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The lawmaker bemoaned how government agency heads carelessly spend service-wide funds and then refuse to provide accounts in accordance with the norms and traditions of accountability.

He issued a warning to all of the indicted agencies, telling them to be ready to take the fall if they don’t show up in front of the panel despite numerous invitations.

According to the member, sections 88 and 89 of the constitution provide the parliament the authority to call federal agencies before it to account for public monies they have used.

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The agencies, he bemoaned, had vehemently refused to appear before his committee, despite the staggering sums of money listed against their names.

In order to compel the agencies to appear before the Public Accounts Committee, he urged the Senate President to issue an arrest warrant.

The Senate President responded by giving the affected agencies one week to appear before the committee or risk having their funding cut in half for 2023.

Reading this list in plenary, according to Lawan, gives the agencies the chance to find out if they were previously unaware of those who might claim ignorance.

“I would like to take this opportunity to recommend that the agencies mentioned here appear before the committee within the next week. We will cut the agencies’ budgets if there is no communication at all and no good, verifiable reasons are provided.

The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, the Ministries of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Transportation, Health, Works and Housing, Information and Culture, Mines and Steal Development, Police Affairs, Defense, Youths and Sports, Petroleum, and Aviation are just a few of the organizations.

State House, the Budget Office, the Presidential Flee, the Nigerian Army, Navy, and Airforce, NAFDAC, Civil Defense, the Presidential Amnesty Program, FERMA, NEMA, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), the Debt Management Office, INEC, the North East Development Commission (NEDC), the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA), the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Dept Management Office, the National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA

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