The senate has threatened to issue warrant of arrest against the Minister of Information, Culture and National Orientation, Lai Mohammed and Minister of Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva over failure to appear before the Senate Committee on Accounts.
Others are Minister of Power, Minister of Women Affairs, Minister of Solid Minerals and the National Population Commission (NPC).
The Senate Committee on Public Accounts who disclosed this on Thursday, said the threat became imperative because of the failure of the heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to honour its invitation to answer audit queries issued against them by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation ( AuGOF) .
Explaining further, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP Edo South), said that the threat became an option when the entire six MDAs expected at the investigative hearing which had the Auditor General, Mr Anthony Ayine in attendance, refused to appear.
The MDAs that have failed to honour the invitation of the Committee, according to Senator Urhoghide, include the Ministry of Information, Culture and National Orientation, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Solid Minerals and the National Population Commission (NPC).
According to him, it has become an ugly pattern of behaviour of persons charged with government functions in the country to disobey constituted authorities on issues of public spending and accountability .
He said: “Over a month ago, we wrote to them to come and answer the audit queries raised against them by the Auditor-General of the Federation in its 2015 Audit Report.
“But they have deliberately and irresponsibly failed to honour our invitation. Their failure to appear before this Committee amount to outright disobedience to constituted authority.
“Ministers that even supposed to come, ran away. We won’t tolerate this any longer because the infractions observed in the accounts of their various ministries run into billions of Naira.
“They will surely be compelled to appear before this committee through issuance of warrants of arrest against them when next they fail our invitation in line with Section 89 of the Constitution.”
Noting that it’s only in Nigeria government will spend government money and failed to defend their expenditure, the lawmaker said that the failure of the agencies to appear before the panel is part of the reasons why Nigerians often accuse the National Assembly of not discharging its duties.
He said: “It is only in Nigeria that people will spend government’s money and fail to show up to defend their Expenditure.”
He explained further that the Ministers and heads of the affected agencies gave different manner of flimsy excuses for their non appearance at the investigative hearing .
Noting that the reasons given by them are absurd, untenable and not serving any public interest, Senator Urhoghide said, “for example, while the Ministry of Information gave flimsy excuse of contractors who handled 3015 projects not been around, other ministries like Power, Women Affairs etc , said they are seeing the copies of the queries for the first time.”
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