The Senate, through its Committee on Public Accounts, has resolved to probe utilisation of over N1.7 trillion Service Wide Votes allocated to various federal government owned Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) from 2017 to 2021 fiscal years.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Matthew Urhogbide (PDP Edo South) , who disclosed this in Abuja on Monday while fielding questions from journalists on slated sessions of the committee for the week, said all government agencies that benefited from the fund during the period under review need to give explanations on how they utilised it.
He had on Thursday last week, ordered the Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Okolieaboh Sylva, to submit details of disbursement of Service Wide Votes as quickly as possible to the committee.
He specifically told the Acting AGF who appeared before the committee to focus on such disbursements to various MDAs made from 2017 to 2021.
“The ones that concern us most now, are disbursements of Service Wide Votes made from 2017-2021.
“Let us also have that of 2022 as quickly as possible since there are 797 MDAs to deal with,” he said. According to him, “Service Wide Votes are meant to address shortfalls in capital and overheads.
“It is more or less the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.
“It is a huge sum of money which is kept for unforeseen expenditures. The recurrent expenditure part of the fund is what is actually referred to as the SWV, while the capital part of it is called Capital Supplementation.
“The SWV is domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Finance.”
He stressed that investigations to be carried out by the committee on the funds centre on who authorised for their disbursements , who applied for them and how were they utilised.
