The Senate on Monday directed the Acting Auditor – General of the Federation, Mr. Adolphus Aghughu, to make the focus of the office as far as yearly auditing is concerned, more on bigger government agencies than smaller ones .
This is even as it accused the Office of Auditor General of the Federation ( OAuGF ) , as part of corruption in Nigeria by not being proactive in auditing .
The Upper legislative Chamber’s committee on Public Account ( SPAC), stated these during 2021 budget defence session the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation ( OAuGF) , had before it .
Specifically , the chairman of the Committee , Senator Mathew Uroghide ( PDP Edo South ) , in his remarks said : ” “You claim that you are auditing the account of the federation and you won’t touch the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation ( NNPC), Nigeria Ports Authority ( NPA), Nigerian Maritime Adminisration and Safety Authority (NIMASA) among others.
“You will remove all the big spenders from your watch list but you will focus on smaller agencies. That is what has been happening from 2015 till date.
“We don’t want to be seeing these smaller agencies of government that you are focusing on because they can’t settle well. We are tired of seeing audit queries involving municipal councils leaving behind the big agencies.”
In his response, the acting Auditor – General said the office has not being treating any government agency as sacred cow as alleged by the committee chairman.
He said the big revenue generating agencies like NNPC , NPA have also been audited and queried, but reports on such exercise are not ready yet due to clinical examination of responses they made to queries given them .
He complained of under-funding of the office as part of reasons why they have not being proactive in their operations as suggested by the committee.
“No government agency is treated as sacred cow as far as audit exercise is concerned. Financial transactions made by the NNPC, NPA and NIMASA in 2015 have been looked into like other agencies.”
