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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

National Mirror: The huge scam that is ‘service wide votes’

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National Mirror
All the Facts | All the Sides
The huge scam that is 'service wide votes'
Jul 2nd 2013, 23:05, by Kayode Odunaro

Sometimes in June last year, the chairman of the House of Representatives' Public Account Committee (PAC), Hon. Solomon Olamilekan Adeola raised alarm over a likely fraudulent practice perpetrated though Service Wide Votes in the capital budget of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Using the audit queries raised by the Office of Auditor General of the Federation for the financial years 2003 to 2006, he unearthed a misuse of budgetary allocation made under the nebulous Service Wide Votes heads that were meant to handle contingencies and emergencies not captured under any headings in appropriations for the MDAs. The sum of N21, 103, 363, 588.92 was allegedly misappropriated by 22 MDAs using this dubious means during this period in focus!

A stunned Hon. Adeola deposed that the way forward would be the removal of 'Service Wide Votes' from the budget since it had become both a conduit pipe for siphoning public funds and a ploy for circumventing or curtailing the constitutional power of the legislature to appropriate all public expenditures in accordance with Section 80 of the 1999 Constitution.

His position then, which was widely reported in the newspapers, was succinctly captured thus: "There should be nothing like Service Wide Vote. Our position is premised on the fact that it is an avenue for the government to spend money that was not duly appropriated for. If we check what makes up the Service Wide Vote in the budget of the Federal Government, you will find out that it is the breakdown of heads and sub-heads of budgets already contained in the original budget of the various MDAs of government. This is not enough for them; they still want an omnibus vote whereby the breakdown of which will be centrally attached to each of these agencies again and tag it 'Service Wide Vote.'

Almost a year after, it is now paramount that the federal legislators must do something to curtail, if not eliminate, what may amount to "contingency scams" in the league of fuel subsidy that assisted in the fraudulent diversion of billions of naira of public fund. This conclusion follows the appearance of Dr. Bright Okogu, the Director General of Budget Office of the Federation, before PAC on Wednesday June 19, 2013 over some expenditure under the Service Wide Votes. The revelations in that encounter were so mind boggling that a member of the PAC at the sitting, Hon (Dr) Babatunde Adejare, complained loudly that the quantum of the misappropriated funds was giving him severe headache.

Dr. Okogu was asked to explain N1.2 billion expenditures in three months for a Presidential Project Assessment Committee (which was what really galled Hon Adejare). Listed were N377 million for settlement of outstanding liabilities; $775, 000 contribution to ECOWAS; and N410 million for capacity building for Ministry of Finance.

Another member of PAC, Honourable Odeneye Kehinde, an accountant, preemptively dismissed all these expenditures as not falling within the purview of the intendment of what Service Wide Votes meant, saying they could have been covered under the Appropriation Act. Indeed when the chairman of PAC requested to know from a Ministry of Finance official if capacity building was in the ministry's original budget, he answered in the affirmative, a clear indication that the N410 million from Service Wide Votes for the ministry's capacity building is suggestive of fraudulent practice. But for the DG, Budget Office, the N1.2 billion expenditures' justification is that they received "approval of the Presidency"!

More bizarre expenditures from Services Wide Votes unearthed included a princely N59.9 million expended to produce and circulate a magazine called 'Servant Leader'; N300 million spent on 2010 World Cup, while N75 million was spent on lobbying for Federal Government in Washington DC. The NNPC also got N257 million as consultancy fees!

The expenditure that most irked Hon. Adeola was N514 million for external auditors while the Office of the Auditor General's request for N1.2 billion was cut to N800 million. Predictably the PAC chairman ordered the names of the audit firms, the accounts they audited and the audit reports, as well as the details of all the above outlandish expenditures to be furnished to his office for further investigation.

However, it was generally agreed that the long term solution to the problem is a bill outlawing the omnibus Service Wide Votes to stop what in the opinion of another member, Hon. Mohammed Umaru Bago, is the circumvention of the constitutional provision for Supplementary Budget, adding that the recourse to 'Service Wide Votes' is a ploy by the executive to avoid the scrutiny of the legislature.

Without doubt, the Service Wide Votes has turned out one huge scam against Nigerians people and it is in the public interest that it is outlawed through an Act of the National Assembly. The nation afford to cannot line individual pockets under the pretext of addressing 'emergencies' or contingencies' like publication and circulation of an ego massaging magazine, or spending N514 million on private audit firms auditing while the Office of Auditor General goes cap in hand looking for money to do its constitutional duty.

The earlier the National Assembly rises up to the occasion of doing the needful by scrapping this conduit pipe that is Service Wide Votes in face of ever contracting public finances, the better for us as a nation.

Chief Odunaro (JP), kayodunaro@hotmail. com, wrote from Abeokuta, Ogun State

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