In a recent report by the Auditor-General of Nigeria, about N5.2 billion spent by some members of the House of Representatives cannot be accounted for.
The Big Picture.
Following an audit by the Auditor-General of the Federation, lawmakers spent huge amounts of money on repairs, maintenance and running costs without evidence of such projects. One major talking point of the report was how lawmakers got N2.55 billion as running costs between July and December 2019 and didn’t document how it was spent.
Also, members of the lower chambers claim to have made salary payments running into billions of naira without showing the payment vouchers as constitution demands.
The Auditor-General pointed to such incidents as a probable cause of disappearance of government funds. A section of the report reads “there was no evidence to show what the funds were used for, and there were no retirement documents despite requests.”
“The above anomalies could be attributed to weaknesses in the internal control system at the Federal House of Representatives of the National Assembly”.