Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly has warned that local governement areas’ chairmen involved in fraudulent spendings of their direct allocations from the federation account under the current autonomy would be prosecuted.
Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Assembly, Hon Eric Akpan (Nsit Ibom), handed down the warning during the ongoing consideration of an audit-report query by the committee.
He, therefore, charged the 31 LGA chairmen to disburse government money legitimately and prudently to avoid litigation in the long run.
“No council chairman should spend or disburse money belonging to government without the approval of the Finance and General-Purpose Committee (FGPC).
“Also, they should not embark on the implementation of any project, no matter how lofty, unless such projects have been captured in the budget.
“Rather, there should be a supplementary budget to cover such project or better still captured in the next year’s budget for the sake of transparency and accountability,” he explained.
The committee chairman who commended local government councils who were able to effectively respond to their audit queries with proofs and backup-evidence, announced that such query has been waived, while those who couldn’t satisfy the committee with their explanations had their query pending.
Hon Akpan, therefore, stressed the need for council administrators to always implement and adhere to the resolutions and recommendations of the PAC at the conclusion of every consideration of audit report query, and charged chairmen of councils to set up a committee to always implement them.
He also pledged the committee’s readiness to partner the chairmen in training council financial officers on IPSAS, “so that it can be fully implemented by councils for proper accountability.”
Responding, the chairman of the state chapter of the Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) and chairman of Uyo LGA, Dr Uwemedimo Udo, commended the committee for painstakingly going through the audit queries and proffering solutions where necessary.
He expressed the worry that most councils were not completely IPSAS-compliant in rendering their account, pledging to further improve through training.
