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National Shame: Office of Federal Auditor-General in N16m debt

From TONY OTARU,Abuja

IT is worrisome and disturbing that in the present arrangements where people in Authority or Government positions steal and defraud the very office and Country they serve of millions of naira or dollars, the office of the Auditor General of the Federation can no longer afford to pay its annual rents from year [20062008], put at over fifteen Million Naira.

A letter of warning and possible litigation tagged, 'Re-outstanding payments of land use by contravention' have already been sent by Abuja Metropolitan management council to the office of the auditor general to effect the payment of the said arrears within two weeks or be dragged to court. These revelations were made known by the Auditorgeneral of the federation, Mr. Onoriode Robert Ejenavi in his address to the opening ceremony of the conference of Federal and State AuditorGeneral combined with the launching of Nigerian universities which took place in Abuja.

Ejenavi told a gathering of participants that the letter reads, 'You are herby notified to make full payments of the outstanding charges within 2 weeks from the date of this letter or your premises will be sealed up immediately and you will be arraigned before an urban and regional planning decree no. 88 of 1992'. The Auditor General also used the occasion to inform participants and government that his office needs a befitting headquarters , better funding and above all, be allowed to be independent from undue interference on its activities, all of which he submitted has adversely affected performances.

He called on the VicePresident ,Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Samshudeen Usman as well as the national assembly at the occasion to look to the plight of his office . In his words, 'Sir, while we humbly request that you kindly convey our urgent need for a befitting headquarter building to the VP and Mr. President, we also seize this opportunity to solicit your support and favourable attention when we come up with our budget proposal for the headquarter building at the 2009 budget defence The auditorgeneral who could not hold his grievances to the system stated that it was no cheering news that Nigeria has no Audit Act. According to him, 'The colonial Audit Act of 1956 that we had was superseded by the limited provisions in the 1979 constitution which were also transferred to the 1999 constitution, although efforts were made to have a modern Audit Act to strengthen the office under the last administration, the audit bill was passed by the National Assembly but was not signed by the immediate past president Obasanjo before leaving office. The Auditor General used the occasion to appeal to the present administration to see to the passage of the same bill and assented to by Mr. President to strengthen the audit system of the country.

In his speech, the VicePresident, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan said the role of the Auditor general in the actualization of vision 2020 is of particular interest in view of the well known agenda of government most especially because of the role it plays as an umpire in the financial transactions between the various parties be it private or public business arena.