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Reps Uncover ‘Unsolicited’ N791m Into NTI Account

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Teddy Oscar, Abuja

 

The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday learnt that an unsolicited sum of N791 million was credited into the account of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Kaduna on December 31, 2012 from the Service Wide Vote (SWV) account by the Budget Office without prior request for any financial assistance from the Federal Government.

 

Mallam Abdulkarim Affo, bursar of NTI, dropped the hint during the committee’s probe on how over N4.7 trillion was expended by the Presidency through the Budget Office from the Service Wide Vote between 2004 and 2012 financial years.

 

“On December 31st 2012, we just received an alert (that the) sum of N791 million was credited into the institute’s bank account from the Budget Office without any prior request for financial assistance from the Federal Government. We tried to make enquiries, and we wrote to the Office of the Accountant ant General of the Federation to find out what was the purpose of the whopping amount, but all efforts yielded no result.

 

“At end of the day, what the institute did was to pay back the money to the treasury at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as required by the law of the federation. We have the evidence of payment. We never made request for any money,” he added.

 

Reacting to the revelation, Hon. Solomon Adeola Olamilekan, chairman of the committee, directed the institute to furnish his committee with the official Treasury receipt to show that it actually returned the money to the Treasury as claimed.

 

Describing the transaction through SWV as a monumental fraud, which had been allegedly going on unabated for a long time, Olamilekan lamented that several billions of naira of the tax payers’ money had gone down the drain.

 

“Only last week, the NAFFAC officials appeared before (this) committee over the whopping sum of N5 billion claimed to have released to the agency by the Budget Office from the Service Wide Vote, and (the) agency claimed it received only N365 million from the amount.

 

“Also, just a while ago, the National Boundary Commission (NBC) appeared before (this) committee over the N2 billion the Budget Office claimed it released to the commission, which the commission also denied ever receiving a kobo from the Budget Office under the Service Wide Vote. Where are we heading to? We must get to the root of these claims and counter claims. The fraud must stop.

 

“It is disheartening that the National Assembly approved about N2.1 trillion for the Service Wide Vote account in the period under review, but at the last count, over N4.7 trillion had been expended by the executive,” he concluded.

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