ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE MDAS

There is urgent need to strengthen the fiscal responsibility act

Nigeria’s public finance management system is a study in the absurd. Despite supposedly laid down rules, the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have continued to indulge in acts that run contrary to accountability and transparency. It is in this light that we can understand the reported response by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) to enquiries by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation. No serious country should accept an explanation that vital documents necessary for tracking alleged misappropriation of funds “have not only been beating (sic) by rains over the years but even possibly been eaten up by termites.”

These ridiculous disclosures may elicit laughter but there is nothing funny about the issues at stake. All the officials involved in these sordid activities should not be allowed to get away with their audacious fraud. Failure to successfully prosecute suspects for financial infractions has led to all manner of silly explanations for gross incompetence and plain theft of public resources in Nigeria. We have heard of monkeys and snakes before, now the culprits are termites. Meanwhile, hundreds of pensioners have died in penury.

While submitting the 2019 audit report to the National Assembly in August 2021, the Auditor-General for the Federation (AuGF), Adolphus Aghughu, had revealed that MDAs of the federal government failed to account for a sum of N4.97 trillion in 2019. This is just one example of the many cases of questionable accounting deficit in the country. Just last week, authorities in Niger Republic denied receiving 10 vehicles allegedly purchased by the federal government for N1.15 billion as captured in the 2022 budget. The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed had admitted the allocation of the funds used for the purchase of the vehicles, raising questions as to where that money went.

A recent report by the GIFT Nigeria Project with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) revealed that revenues generated by MDAs may not be in full compliance with remittances to the public coffers as required by law. Specifically, the report indicated that the NSITF has not submitted its annual financial statement (AFS) to the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) for scrutiny since 2010, in clear breach of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA, 2007). Similarly, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is in violation of the same provision since 2012.

Almost on annual basis, Nigerians are regaled with cases of lack of accountability in the MDAs, yet the executive and legislative arms of government do little or nothing to punish the masterminds or plug the obvious leakages in the system that fuel the miscarriage of financial discipline and transparency. In a country where snakes and monkeys swallow or siphon ‘raw cash’, it is not strange that in the case of the NSITF, ‘termites’ opted for a more lenient option of eating up most of the vouchers containing details of how N17.158 billion was spent.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act FRA 2007 seeks to provide for prudent management of the nation’s resources, ensure long term macro-economic stability of the national economy, and secure greater accountability and transparency in fiscal operations within the Medium-Term Fiscal Policy Framework (MTEF). But this act is replete with several loopholes which have made government revenue/finances vulnerable to massive looting, corruption and lack of accountability in the MDAs. For instance, the act identified 50 offences/violations inherent in the MDAs yet did not provide sanctions to punish offenders.

There have been three attempts by the commission to see through a wholesale amendment of the act in the National Assembly to equip it with the needed powers to whip the MDAs into line. Two previous attempts failed due to the lack of will by the lawmakers and the obvious non-commitment of the executive arm of government to bring the amendment to a conclusive end. The third attempt at amending the act is currently before the Ninth National Assembly. We urge the lawmakers to conclude the amendment of this all-important act. The greater interest of the country must override every other interest. The growing culture of high-level impunity and grand corruption must be confronted with the seriousness it deserves.