The environment for an effective public accounts scrutiny in the country does not exist. It is a coded message in the Audit Bill seeking administrative and financial autonomy for the office of the Auditor-General for the Federation. Lack of transparency and accountability in governance and compromise of public institutions have turned Nigeria into a vineyard for treasury looters.
According to the AGF, Anthony Ayine, the envisioned audit template will stem the tidal wave of corruption in the public service with a first line charge funding and direct recruitment of personnel in line with international best practices. Investors and other stakeholders, he says, “will expect to see that the Auditor-General operates in an environment where he/she enjoys true independence; that, yes, he carries out his audit work, certifies and gives his audit opinion objectively.” This evokes integrity questions on such reports in the past.
So critical is the Auditor-General’s office that it is enshrined in the 1999 Constitution and given the power, according to Section 85 (4) “…to conduct periodic checks of all government statutory corporations, commissions, authorities, agencies …” It submits its reports to the National Assembly annually for action. In discharging the responsibility of the office, the constitution underscores the point that the Auditor-General shall not be subject to the direction or control of any other authority or person. The constitution, in recognising the parliament as an ally, also created the Public Accounts Committee — the only parliamentary committee so entrenched.
However, what is clear since 1999 is the legislature’s abandonment of its role. The immediate past AGF, Samuel Ukura, decried the malady in 2015 at a synergy retreat between his office and the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, in partnership with the Department for International Development, UK. He said, “Since 1999, we have submitted 14 annual reports to the Public Accounts Committee… but those reports haven’t been passed to the plenary session, let alone passed to the Executive for implementation.”
Consequently, all frauds, inappropriate charges on public funds, and refunds that would have been made thereof, in the Ministries, Agencies and Departments are covered up. It is a perverse incentive to errant public officials, which they maximally exploit in the banditry against public finances.
With this scenario, the operations of the AGF, personnel emoluments, the over N100 million Public Accounts committees in the House and Senate use annually to do oversight on the MDAs, and then write their reports, are a sheer waste of taxpayers’ money.
But why does the National Assembly cringe over this matter? The reason is not far-fetched: it does not have the moral authority to cast the first stone on treasury plunderers. It is a point proved in its failure to account for N9.4 billion in 2014, according to the Auditor-General’s report. It said no “documentary evidence” backed such a huge expenditure, just as out of N47 million meant for refund to public coffers, only N36,000 was paid.
The audit autonomy bill may be passed to strengthen the institution, as a watchdog of the treasury, in accordance with global best practices. However, the crux of the matter lies in the political environment that makes an average public office holder to see public funds as the spoils of war. A total breakdown of law and order and government’s crass indifference to the enforcement of its writ have not helped either.
How public finance should be managed in Nigeria is entrenched in the constitution, just as the Fiscal Responsibility Act and other financial regulations provide sufficient rampart against abuses. Yet, the bazaar has been barefacedly carried out since 1999, as underscored by the N2.5 trillion fuel subsidy scam of 2011. The protest it triggered in 2012 compelled the government to reduce expenditure on it to N971 billion.
Section 80 (1) of the Constitution, which established the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, where all revenues due to the Federation shall be paid, was repeatedly violated by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. A typical example is the latest report of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparent Initiative that indicted the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation for not remitting $21.8 billion oil revenue to the Fund. Part of the money is the $15.8 billion dividends from the country’s 49 per cent investment in the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, between 2000 and 2014.
That the National Assembly has failed to play its role is also in the Senate Public Accounts Committee report of 2013 that revealed how N1.04 trillion out of N1.5 trillion that accrued to special accounts between 2002 and 2012 was grossly mismanaged. David Mark, the then Senate President, was so shocked that he confessed: “If we had done well since 2002, this should not have happened. But we never bothered to look into this. Overall, we share in the blame…”
Detailed rules and norms of behaviour govern the conduct of civil servants in developed countries. But the process of corruption is so invisible that it leaves little documentary evidence. So, public finance audit in any democracy is a veritable anti-corruption tool. In South Africa, for example, where the Auditor-General’s role is also enshrined in the constitution like Nigeria’s, additional powers have been given to that office through legislation, which states, among others, the discretion to “determine the nature and extent of the audit to be carried out and request the details and statements of accounts …”
In Canada, the Auditor-General is an officer of the parliament. This is a departure from our own system and stresses the critical role of the legislature in ensuring value for money in public finance management.
Nigeria needs effective checks and balances, a revival strategy on public expenditures that will not stop at autonomy of the AGF office. The account details of some MDAs are denied it and external auditors. A most notorious case was the alleged missing $20 billion oil revenue, for which a forensic audit of the NNPC account was ordered. The external auditor, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, that was hired, was not availed of all the documents it required to do a thorough job. Therefore, it failed to provide any opinion or attestation to its report.
Strengthening the governance capacity is a good strategy to support improved accountability, transparency, and probity. Good governance is a strong antidote to corruption and fraud. But where the constitution is brazenly abused on revenue receipts and expenditures without consequences, no other legislative instrument will bail us out. Therefore, concerns about the political environment that promotes these aberrations should be faced squarely. Without doing so, no matter how good or objective the AGF’s reports might be, they will continue to be dumped on the shelf of the National Assembly, as a result, beyond the Executive’s reach for implementation.
