Some heads of major government’s Departments, Agencies and Parastatals are highly likely to serve jail time following their refusals to honour invitations extended to address irregularities of various audit reports.
Top on the list is Godwin Emefiele, serving Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; Effiong Akwa, Sole Administrator of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC; Melee Kyari, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, to mention a few.
The public learnt of this development when the House of Representative’s Committee on Public Accounts revealed in its report on Wednesday that those at the helm of affairs in government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, have failed to show up and defend their audited records.
According to the report made available to the Media by the Committee Chairman, Oluwole Oke, the Heads of fifty-four MDAs allegedly declined from owning up to their claims of submitting accurate accounts.
Heads of MDAs May Serve Jail Time
Meanwhile, the Representatives stated its decision to issue arrest warrants on those mentioned above, emphasising the 2014 to 2018 audit reports by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
The Reps Committee on Public Accounts asked all involved parties from the listed MDAs to refund the money for failing to account for the missing funds.
“All Chief Accounting Officers of the 54 government agencies listed on pages 4 to 6, that refused appearance to defend their positions during the public hearing without any written reason, prominent among them are CBN, NNPC, NDDC, RMAFC, etc., should be issued a warrant of arrest to compel their appearance to respond to the matter within a week in line with Section 89 (d) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended).”
The statement contained thirty recommendations from the Committee, demanding that several serving and former managing directors, directors-general, directors of finance, and accounts/administration, be scheduled for prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
