Lucky Obukohwo Reporting
House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has given seven days ultimatum to the Federal Fire Service (FFS)to return N1. 48 billion COVID-19 fund to the coffers of the Federal Government.
The Committee gave the ultimatum after the Federal Fire Service failed to appear before it to give account of how it expanded the money which it got during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This followed the adoption of a motion by the deputy chairman of the committee, Jeremiah Umar, calling for a refund of the money to the coffers of the government.
Umar said that since the agency has repeatedly refused to honour the Committee’s invitation to explain how the fund was expended, it should refund the money to the government coffers.
“So many other agencies have appeared before this committee and the investigation is ongoing. I don’t see any reason why the Fire Service will ignore a committee like this”, Umar said.
The Committee chairman, Bamidele Salam, said the Fire Service, after refunding the N1. 484 billion, should submit the evidence of the payment to the parliament within seven days.
Salam added that the agency have refused to honour the Committee’s summon for three consecutive times and issued fresh summons to some Ministries, Departments and Agencies ( MDAs) that failed to honour its summons to respond to audit queries from the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, on the expenditure of COVID-19 funds.
Salam said, “A public officer who fails to respond to the Auditor-General’s query satisfactorily within 21 days for failure to collect government revenue, shall be surcharged and be transferred to another schedule. Where an officer fails to give a satisfactory reply to an audit query within seven days for his failure to account for government revenue, such officer shall be surcharged for the full amount involved and such officers handed over to either the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).”
The affected MDAs are Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, N50.5 billion; Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, N33 billion; Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, through the National Centre for Women Development, N625 million; National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC),N25 billion and the Federal Ministry of Health, N10 billion.