THE Senate has threatened the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning with a warrant of arrest if the Director, Cash Departments fails to appear to provide sensitive documents related to disbursement of Service Wide Votes and missing N113 million on salary adjustment for Joint Admission Board Matriculation (JAMB).
Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja, Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP, Edo South), stated that the threat became imperative over the absence of the Director who has ignored three invites.
Urhoghide said the Committee had written a letter of appearance to the Ministry on 20th of October, 2022 and the letter was received on 21 October, 2022 by the Ministry.
The ministry was also to give details of release to all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, including Police and Armed Forces.
According to him, another letter was written to the Ministry on December 8, 2022, on the issue concerning missing N113 million of salary augmentation for JAMB.
Meanwhile, the office of Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) told the Committee that the N113 million was released to JAMB in May 2017 for salary augmentation.
The representative of JAMB, Director of Finance and Administration, Mufutau Bello, told the Committee that the N113 million was not released to them, just as he argued that if the money was released, it would have cut across the whole year.
According to him, it would cut across all MDAs using CONLESS. If there is a shortfall in May, it will spread to the whole year.
Not happy with the development and frequent shunning of the Committee by the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Finance and the Director, Cash Management of the Ministry, Senator Urhoghide then gave the Permanent Secretary 48 hours to appear and provide the relevant documents to the Committee or face warrant of arrest by next week.
Meanwhile, the Senate, on Tuesday, approved the 2023 budget of N559,080,711,000.00 for the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.
This was sequel to the presentation of the report by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Communications, Senator Oluremi Tinubu (APC, Lagos Central).
The NCC 2023 budget of N559,080,711,000 is made up of total recurrent expenditure of N86. 7bn, total capital expenditure of N5. 2bn, and special projects of N35bn.
In the report, the Commission is expected to transfer N416bn out of the projected revenue, to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
The Senate also passed the Universal Service Provision Fund 2023 budget of N16bn, which is made up of N2. 4bn recurrent expenditure, N124.8bn capital expenditure and projects expenditure of N13. 4bn.
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