The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives, on Thursday, ordered the Federal Ministry of Industries, Trade and Investment along with its past and present Permanent Secretaries to jointly refund the sum of N75 billion to the coffers of the federal government with immediate effect
The committee chaired by Bamidele Salam (PDP-Osun) gave the directive at the resumed probe of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, of the federal government on alleged mismanagement of COVID-19 intervention funds by the MDAs.
This followed a motion moved by a member of the committee, Bassey Akiba (LP, Cross Rivers) after the non-appearance of officials of the ministry at its investigative hearing on Thursday.
Akiba moved the motion to compel the ministry to refund the monies appropriated to it during the intervention on COVID-19 pandemic in the country after failure of the officials of the ministry to honour the three invitations extended to them to defend the allocations to the ministry as contained in a query from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
The committee adopted the motion after it was seconded and directed that the ministry, its past and present Permanent Secretaries, should refund the N75 billion bn to the coffers of federal government with immediate effect.
The chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam (PDP, Osun) had earlier informed the committee that despite series of invitation to the ministry, its officials had failed to respond or appear before it.
According to him, the federal Ministry of Trade, Industries and Investments got the sum of N75 billion as COVID-19 Intervention funds.
He said the Public Account Committee had sent invitation to the Ministry of Trade Industries and Investments three times, and none of the invitations had been honoured.
“The Federal Ministry of Trade was to make their appearance yesterday. That was the last opportunity given to them and there was no such appearance. N75 billion was appropriated to them.
“Former Permanent Secretary and the current Permanent Secretary are affected by this motion to refund the sum of N75 billion to the federal government as COVID-19 intervention which as far as we are concerned has not been expended.”
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He made it clear that the essence of the probe was not to witch hunt anybody, ministry or agencies but to ensure that the committee was transparent and accountable in its investigation over the various sums of money released to the MDAs.
Also, the committee directed the Federal Ministry of Health to return N10 billion meant for the production of COVID-19 vaccines which was not utilised to the federal government.
The directive followed the appearance and submission by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Daju Kachallom who told the committee that the funds were domiciled with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
The committee said the funds should be returned, adding that if the ministry needed it for anything else, it should make a fresh request to the National Assembly for proper appropriation.
Similarly, the Rural Electrification Agency, REA, was directed to submit documents detailing the utilisation of the agency’s COVID-19 intervention funds.
The DG of the agency, Salihijo Ahmed, who appeared before the committee requested for more time to submit relevant documents.
The committee directed him to submit the documents on Friday before the close of work and to appear on Monday at 10 a.m.
The Management of the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, led by its Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku, also appeared before the committee to defend the allocation her agency got through the supervisory ministry
According to her, “Year 2020 was particularly challenging owing to the advent of the coronavirus. On the 11th of March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic which negatively impacted all human activities, with the aviation industry one of the most severely affected.
“At that time, the authority was barely able to part pay staff salaries, while other commitments were put on hold with only about 5% revenue deployed for airport maintenance. This situation did not augur well with the various aviation unions. This resulted in them issuing threats to shut down the airports if something drastic was not done.
“This gave rise to the request by the authority, through the supervising ministry, for a six months’ salary intervention in the sum of N16.8 billion for payment of personnel cost and other related costs. From this request, the sum of N7.7 billion was released to FAAN out of the N24 billion requested by the Ministry of Aviation as intervention.
“The breakdown of the utilization of this fund is attached in our submission.”
The committee consequently directed her to reappear before it with relevant documents to back up her defence.
