The Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation has uncovered about N4.93bn unapproved allowances paid by the management of the National Health Insurance Scheme to its members of staff.
\nThe discovery is contained in the 2017 audit report of the Auditor-General for the Federation, which was obtained by our correspondent in Abuja.
\nThe report, which was signed by the Auditor-General for the Federation, Mr Anthony Ayine, stated that the N4.93bn was paid to members of staff between January 2016 and December 2017.
\nThe report listed the irregular allowances to include upfront allowance, upfront differential allowance, 13th-month salary allowance, and pre-retirement overseas training allowance.
\nOthers are a terminal benefit or exit package, and sitting allowance. It said the terminal benefit allowance is different from what the Contributory Pension Act provided for.
\nThe report stated that these payments violated Public Service Rule 130102, as they were not part of the allowances listed as payable to officers in the Federal Public Service.
\nThe report reads in part, \u201cDuring the periodic check of National Health Insurance Scheme, Abuja, various irregular and unapproved allowances amounting to \u00a6 4,931,475,094.63 were paid to members of staff during the period January 2016 to December 2017
\n\u201cThe payments violated Public Service Rule 130102, as they are not part of the allowances listed as payable to officers in the Federal Public Service.
\n\u201cAllowance differential payment is illegal and alien to the public service as Public Service allowances are paid on the basis of Grade level as at the time of payment.
\n\u201cSitting allowance was paid for holding day to day committee meetings, for which the officers received salaries in violation of Circular Ref No. SWC\/s\/04\/S.310\/T\/65 of 8th April 2016 which says that \u2018Public officers on monthly salary are not entitled to sitting allowance for holding meetings in their offices.\u201d
\nAyine said in the report that despite the provision of Financial Regulation 3210(v) which stipulated that the Chief Executive Officers of government agencies must submit both the audited accounts and management reports to him not later than 31st May of the following year, about 265 of them had yet to comply as of June 30 this year.
\nHe said while 160 agencies defaulted in the submission of audited accounts for 2016; the figure rose to 265 agencies in 2017.
\nIn addition, he said 11 agencies have never submitted any financial statements since their inception.
\nHe said, \u201cA number of major weaknesses and lapses in the management of public funds and resources were identified across several MDAs during the annual audit.
\n\u201cOur findings range from irregular expenditures to failure to surrender surplus revenues to the Treasury, all running into billions of naira. Also notable was the continuing failures in the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards.
\n\u201cOverall, our findings are indicative of significant weaknesses in expenditure control, accounting, financial reporting and in the completeness and accuracy of the consolidated financial statements.
\nAs was in previous years, the Auditor-General picked a hole in the annual budgeting process of the Federal Government, stating that they are unable to support genuine development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation has uncovered about N4.93bn unapproved allowances paid by the management of the National Health Insurance Scheme to its members of staff. The discovery is contained in the 2017 audit report of the Auditor-General for the Federation, which was obtained by our correspondent in Abuja. The report, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=222702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/222709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}