HEDA Sues AG, Wants Details Of ?173bn MDA Budget

A Federal high Court in Abuja has been asked to compel the Accountant General of the Federation to release details of the N173billion released to various Ministries, Departments and parastatals during Covid-19.

The ministries, parastatals including security agencies, educational institutes and other contractors are alleged to have received some N173billion from federal purse in the first half of 2020 without accounts documentation.

Nigeria’s foremost anti-corruption concern, Human and Environmental Development Agenda, (HEDA Resource Centre) in a motion ex-parte filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja is seeking the order of mandamus to compel the Accountant General of the Federation (AG) to release details of the expenditure up to May 29, 2020.

In what promised to be another historic case, HEDA said the AG’s professionalism and his association or membership of local and international accounting groups is at stake if the court finds him guilty.

HEDA cites Section 6 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, Order 26, Rule 6, of the Federal High Court as the basis for the judges’ powers.

HEDA submitted as exhibit the publication in the respect of Dataphyte consortium titled, “173 Billion payments without Description Defeats Nigeria’s Open Government Initiative”.

HEDA’s Chairman, Mr. Olanrewaju Suraju said the N173billion payment raises concern about how government parastatals expend public funds adding that his group seeks details to determine if the funds were judiciously utilised and in public interest.

The Dataphyte analysis of data on the open Treasury Portal had indicated that the whopping sum of ?173billion worth 1,353 payments was made to various parastatals between January, 2020, and April, 2020, without descriptions.

HEDA said it made several requests in writing asking the AG to release the expenditure without any response prompting the legal redress.

The group said it is in the public interest that the details were released.

HEDA said there are very strong indications that the office of the Accountant General of the Federation has continued to neglect proper description of payments issued to contractors and government agencies, expressing fear that the trend may defeat transparency and accountability, key elements necessary for good governance.

A breakdown of the figures showed that the zero description payments in January and February were ?5.16billion and ?6.76billion, respectively.

In March and April, 2020, the Federal Government also paid ?85.2billion and ?15.22billion without description.

“The way these payments were made suggests unprofessional accounting procedures that will undermine transparency”, Suraju said.

Analysts contend that most of the payments were made to contractors under the National Rural Electrification Agency, National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Nigerian Navy, Federal Fire Service, Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports development, National Inland Waterways Authority.

Other end users were Nigerian Air Force, Nigerian Defence Academy, Nigerian Correctional Service, and Federal Ministry of Niger Delta.

In earlier report, Dataphyte said between January and November, 2019, ambiguous payments were also made.

The values of the questionable transactions were set at ?510.2billion representing 16 percent of the total payments done by the government in the same period.

The group said the description makes it difficult to establish accounts expenditure.

The case has been assigned to Court 3, Federal High Court, Abuja.

Nigeria remains at the lowest rank of Transparency International (TI) rating prompting the country’s continuous decline in global corruption rating.