Members of the House of Representatives were in shock on Wednesday when the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Anthony Ayine, disclosed that over two years after the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy came into operation, it had not been audited.
He also claimed not to be aware of the amount of funds so far deposited into the account since his office had not done due diligence on it.
Ayine had appeared before an ad hoc committee of the House, which is investigating the operations of the TSA since it was inaugurated in 2015.
The committee said an estimated N4.2tn had so far been transferred into the TSA, which is domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The committee is chaired by a member of the All Progressives Congress from Kano State, Mr. Abubakar Nuhu.
The AGF quickly admitted blame before the lawmakers, saying that it was an “omission” for his office not to have audited the TSA over the last two years.
In the absence of the audit, Ayine stated that his office had not produced a report on the status of the TSA.
However, he reminded the lawmakers that he met the situation like that when he resumed duties about seven months ago.
He added that his first step was to review the situation and immediately put plans in place to carry out the audit.
Ayine added, “For TSA, we have not actually carried out any performance audit directly. After my review (of the situation), I asked why there was no audit of the TSA and I was told it was an ongoing programme, but I knew that there is the need to carry it out.
“Not carrying it out was an omission and it was wrong because the circle of audit is for preceding year and we have had two years for TSA now.
“Since I noticed that no performance audit was done, I gave the directive that it should be carried out three weeks ago.”
When the committee asked a specific question about the N4.2tn, the AGF replied that he could not confirm it without an audit being done first.
“Not quite (sure); I need to, as an auditor, to have verifiable evidence before me to be categorical in my response.
“I need to have documents relating (to the transfers).”
But, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation praised the TSA policy, saying that it had impacted positively on the economy by monitoring the flow of funds within Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government.
The Director (Funds), Mr. Alexander Adeyemi, who spoke for the AGOF’s office, explained how the TSA had reduced pressure on the Consolidated Revenue Fund by over N4bn monthly.
“With this, there is fund to carry out activities of MDAs because payments are no longer authorised until due diligence is carried out and verified on projects,” Adeyemi added.
The director advised the committee to seek further details from the CBN.
But, efforts by the committee to get information on the N1.65tn said to be the inflow into the sub-account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in the TSA, yielded no results.
The director simply replied that his office did not have any data on the NNPC.
“The information on this inflow is not available to the AGOF’ because it is not available in the treasury.
“The committee may want to ask the NNPC and the CBN to provide the information”, he told lawmakers.
However, he informed members that whenever there were differences in figures between Remita and the AGOF, the matter would be resolved through the reconciliation of the figures.
The members were unhappy that the GMD of the NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru, who had been invited for the session, stayed away.
The committee threatened to use “constitutional powers” vested in the House to compel attendance by the GMD if he failed to provide information on the corporation’s TSA transactions.
