Senate Investigates 252 MDAs Over N5trn Service Wide Votes

The Senate, on Wednesday, commenced investigation of 252 Ministries, Departments and Agencies government (MDAs), who benefited from N5 trillion Service Wide Votes (SWV) between 2017 to 2021.

A Service Wide Vote (SWV) which is also known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund Charge is the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.

The decision of the Senate to investigate the SWV was as a result of discovery it made that many agencies collected money from SWV without notifying the National Assembly Committees that are mandated by law to oversight the agencies.

Addressing the journalists, the chairman of the Senate Public Account Committee (SPAC), Senator Mathew Urhoghide, said that the investigation had to do with disbursement of Service Wide Votes between 2017 to 2021, adding that the Service Wide Vote has become major component of the nation’s budget considering the amount budgeted for it in the budget annually.

He said the Committee has to see how the monies collected from Service Wide Vote were being expended because there were confusions on the approval of the votes

According to him, “We want to see how this money is being expended, there are confusion on approval, we want to really get to know what is going on.”

He added that any agency who fails to appear before the Committee will attract a warrant of arrest on the head of the agency because it has been discovered that many agencies collected the fund without informing the relevant National Assembly Committees saddled with responsibility to overnight the agencies.

He said he will not tolerate the absence of Galaxy Backbone, Ministry of Interior, Budget Office, State House, and NBET, who were scheduled to appear before the committee.

He added that the Office of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) collected N180 billion from the votes, NBET collected N2.9 billion and Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs received N445 billion from the votes.

Among the 252 Ministries, Departments and Agencies that are expected to appear in the ongoing investigation of Service Wide Votes between 2017 till 2021 are Ministry of Information and Culture, Defence, NHIS, Police, Ministry of Power, Bank of Industry, Water Resources, National Assembly, Public Complaints Commission (PCC), Directorate of State Service (DSS) and Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).