Reps uncover fresh missing N35bn

More revelations by the House of Representatives
Committee on Public Accounts indicated on
Thursday that the Office of the Head of Service of
the Federation could not account for N35bn it
collected from the Service Wide Vote within nine
years.
While the records of the Budget Office of the
Federation showed that the OHSF received N52bn
between 2004 and 2012, the Permanent Secretary,
Mr. Remi Adelakun, admitted only N17.6bn.
The committee, which is chaired by Mr. Solomon
Olamilekan, insisted on Thursday that Adelakun
must explain how the N35bn was spent.
At Thursday’s session, the permanent secretary
and officials of the budget office had disagreed over
how much the latter released to the OHSF.
The records of the budget office showed that in
2004, the OHSF received N2.7bn; N9.8m in 2005;
N701.7m in 2006; N896.3m in 2007; N5.3bn in 2008
and another N612.9m; and N70m in 2009.
For 2010, the figure was N17.6bn; in 2011, it was
N13.6bn and N8.5bn in 2012.
However, the OHSF admitted the N17.6bn released
in 2010.
Olamilekan ruled that the permanent secretary must
produce documents on how the balance of over
N35bn was utilised within two weeks.
In a separate case, the committee directed the
Central Bank of Nigeria to refund the N1.015bn it
spent in 2007 to print 65 million ballot papers for
that year’s presidential election.
The committee stated that there were “double
payments” for the ballot papers, which it said the
bank could not explain adequately.
Although the Director, Corporate Services, CBN, Mr.
Dipo Fatokun, who represented the bank, denied the
alleged double payments, the committee insisted
that the bank made contradictory submissions.
Fatokun said, “There was no double payment. When
we first appeared before the committee, we did not
check our records very well and that was why we
thought there were double payments.”