The Federal Fire Service has been ordered to return N1.48 billion to the Federation Account within a week by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives.
This money was obtained as intervention funding for the COVID-19 pandemic, for which the agency is unable to provide an accounting.
The order was issued on Wednesday by the committee chaired by Bamidele Salam as a result of the service’s third consecutive refusal to show up for the investigation hearing.
A proposal to return the money was made by Jeremiah Umar, the committee’s deputy chairman, who stated that “many other agencies have appeared before this committee, and the investigation is ongoing. I fail to see why the fire department would disregard such a body.”
Umar continued, saying that the service should return the N1.48 billion it received in 2020 because it was unable to appear before the legislator to address the issues surrounding its COVID-19 expenditure.
This occurred at the same time that the committee extended new invitations to a few more Federal Government departments, agencies, and ministries that had not paid their share of taxes to appear and respond to questions posed by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation regarding the billions of naira allotted as COVID-19 intervention funds.
The National Center for Disease Control received N25 billion; the Federal Ministry of Health received N10 billion; the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation received N33 billion; the National Center for Women Development received N625 million from the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs; and the National Center for Agriculture and Food Security received N50.5 billion.
Salam bemoaned in his statement that the committee had received three summonses from the Federal Fire Service, but that the other impacted MDAs had only received two. He said that the latter group had been given a week to comply or face penalties.
“A public officer who fails to satisfactorily respond to the Auditor-General’s query for failure to collect government revenue due within 21 days shall be surcharged and transferred to another schedule,” he said. An officer will be surcharged for the entire amount involved and turned over to either the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission or the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission if he or she does not provide a satisfactory response to an audit query regarding their failure to account for government revenue within seven days.”
This Committee has a ton of work ahead of it. We need to shift our focus to other missions because the COVID-19 inquiry is only one.
