The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee has ordered the Ministries of health and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment to refund unutilized funds of 10 billion naira and 75 billion naira respectively meant to mitigate the effects of covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The Committee also gave the Rural Electrification Agency, 24 hours to provide all necessary documents to back up monies released to it from the COVID intervention fund for medical facilities across the country.
The essence of this hearing is to ensure that the committee is transparent and accountable in its investigation over the various sums of money released amounting to 600 billion naira as intervention funds meant to mitigate the effect of covid-19 on Nigerians.
The Federal Government as part of efforts to recover unutilized covid-19 funds released to special ministries during the pandemic to mitigate its effect on Nigerians, the house of representatives public accounts committee urged the affected government ministries and agencies to refund all monies budgeted as special intervention fund.
The Ministries of health, rural electrification and Industry Trade and Investment who were all present failed to convince the committee on how the funds were utilized.
Members were however not satisfied with the way these funds were utilized; prompting the committee to issue a directive that the funds be returned to government coffers which should be channeled towards other pressing needs.
In his ruling the committee chairman ordered the ministry of health to refund the 10 billion naira released for the local production of covid-19 vaccine.
He also ruled that the past and present executive secretaries of the ministry Industries, Trade and Investment, return the 75-billion-naira covid-19 intervention fund and submit all documents to back up the refund to the committee.
The committee gave all the affected ministries and agencies to appear before the committee on Monday 22nd of January 2024.
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