News Editor
By David Odama
The House of Representatives has directed 11 airline operators to refund the sum of N3,451,076,527 to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) within 21 days.
The resolution was contained in the report of the House Committee on Public Accounts chaired by Honourable Bamidele Salam on the ‘alleged mismanagement of COVID-19 intervention funds to MDAs of government from 2020 to 2022’ passed by the House on Thursday, October 10, 2024, exclusively obtained by the Nigerian Tribune.
From the report submitted to the Committee by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), the operators were part of the 92 beneficiary institutions that got allocations from the total sum of N1,323,754,296,732.77 COVID-19 intervention funds.
(NIMET) got N103,094,038; Office of the Auditor General for the Federation -N55,167,000; Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) got N24,049,255,566.46; Nigeria Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) got N5,009,480,015 while University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada got N1,017,393,783.63, respectively.
As stipulated in the Executive summary of the report obtained by Nigerian Tribune, “funding allocation made by the Federal Government and both international/local donors from private citizens and foreign-supports partners to the Presidential Task Force into 5 dedicated Commercial Bank Accounts approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria to coordinate and oversee the multi-sectorial inter-governmental efforts towards contending the spread of the disease in the country. The Commercial Banks include; Zenith Bank, Access Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) and United Bank for Africa (UBA).”
During the investigative hearing conducted by the House Committee on Public Accounts chaired by Honourable Salam, the lawmakers observed that: “There were many cases of non-appearance, delayed appearance, non-submission of required documents and late submission of documents by some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of Government who got funds from the Federal Government Covid-19 intervention funding.
“The Central Bank of Nigeria did not provide required information on time despite several letters written by the Committee. There were several cases of deliberate refusal by some beneficiary entities to provide the certificates of no-objection issued to them by Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) on procurements during the pandemic for verification by the Committee.
“There were several instances of unjustifiable delay in procurements by Chief Executive Officers contrary to provisions of the Procurement Act for which funds were released between 2020 and 2021 but yet to be completed till date. The committee observed that most of the private sector beneficiaries of the Covid-19 Intervention Funding used the funds for purposes other than which they were approved by the disbursing MDAs.
“The most apparent examples were private airline operators like Arik Air, Air Peace, Dana Airline, Azman Air, Max Air, Aero Contractors Overland etc. and other subsidiary airport service providers who used the funds provided for activities in their normal course of operations rather than payment of staff salaries or maintenance of aircrafts during the period of shutdown. The airline operators also shun invitations to provide more information on the use of funds received from the Federal Government as COVID-19 intervention.
“A private airline operator (King Airlines and Travels Limited) which received a sum of N15.843 million and kept the money in a dedicated account, has however, offered to refund the money to the Federal Government. Investigation also reveals that few of the MDAs diverted their Covid-19 intervention funds to different Programme/projects for which similar budgetary provisions had adequately been made in the Appropriation Acts for the period under review,” it said.
After the adoption of the first phase of the investigation, the House directed EFCC and ICPC to provide comprehensive information on funds recovered from MDAs on COVID-19 intervention funds to the Public Accounts Committee and the House Committee on Finance.
The House also directed the office of the Accountant General of the Federation to provide evidence of remittances/mop-up of unspent funds on COVID-19 intervention funds from MDAs.
The House however cautioned all Chief Accounting Officers of MDAs, Medical Directors of Medical institutions, Directors of Finance and Accounts and Bursars with their Tender Board Members to stop awarding contracts above their statutory threshold and ensure they always obtain BPP approval for future procurements, in line with relevant extant laws. (Courtesy, Nigerian Tribune)
