252 MDAsunder Senate probe over N5trn Service Wide Votes

Nigeria Senate has placed 252 Ministries, Department and Agencies of the federal government that benefitted from N5 trillion service wide votes under its scrutiny. Senate said it  started the holistic  Investigation of 252 government agencies that  benefited from N5 trillion Service Wide Votes (SWV) between 2017 to 2021. Senate’s decision  to investigate the Service Wide Votes (SWV) was as a result of findings that many agencies of government collected Fund from SWV without recourse to the National Assembly Panels that is mandated by law to do oversight of the affected agencies. A Service Wide Vote (SWV) which is also known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund Charge is more or less the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.

Speaking in Abuja. Chairman, Senate Committee on  Public Accounts,  Senator Matthew Urhoghide, said that the Investigation has to do with disbursement of Service Wide Votes between 2017 to 2021 adding the Service Wide Votes has become major component of nation’s budget considering amount budgeted annually for it in the budget. Urhoghide said that the  Committee has to see how the money collected from Service Wide Votes is being expended because there are confusion on the approval of the Votes. He said “we want to see how this money is being expended there are confusion on approval, we want to really get to know what is going on.” According to him, if any  agency   fails to appear,  the Committee would not hesitate to issue warrant of arrest on the head of the agency against the backdrop that  it has been discovered that many agencies collected this fund without informing the National Assembly Committee that is  saddled with the responsibility of over sighting  the agency.

Senator Urhoghide said that the Senate  will not tolerate the absence of Galaxy Backbone, Ministry of Interior, Budget Office, State House , NBET who are scheduled to appear before the committee and that Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) collected N180 billion from the votes, NBET collected N2.9 billion and Ministry of Humanitarian, received N445 billion from the Votes. Among the 252 Ministries , Departments and Agencies that are expected to appear before the Committee in the  ongoing Investigation of Service Wide Votes between 2017 till 2021 are Ministry of Information and Culture; Defence , NHIS, Police , Ministry of Power , Bank of Industry; Water Resources , National Assembly, Public Complaint Commission (PCC), Directorate of State Service (DSS) and the Presidential Amnesty Programme.