Nasarawa freezes accounts of all MDAs

The Nasarawa state government has frozen the accounts of all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) for not complying with the directive to submit their account balances.

Zakka Yakubu, the state’s accountant general, made this known in Lafia, the state capital, on Thursday.

Yakubu said his office wrote all MDAs to submit their balances from various accounts and to also make refund of unspent monies, but they failed to respond.

“I am under the directive of Governor Umaru Al-Makura to inform all MDAs that all transactions in their accounts are hereby suspended,” he wrote in a letter.

“In view of that, all MDAs are expected to forward all their bank account balances and other documents to my office immediately.”

He said the needed information, including bank accounts of the MDAs, was to enable his office close the state account for 2017 in line with global best practice.

“All revenue collections made during the financial year must be brought into account on or before Sunday, December 31,” he said.

“All imprest issued during the financial year must be retired and any unretired amount would be classified personal and recovered from the salary of the imprest holder.”

Yakubu added that the government would appoint board survey to examine the transactions of the MDAs and reconcile the documents to be submitted and the balance in their accounts.

The accountant-general said the state had received N4.5 billion as the last tranche of Paris Club refund to the state.

According to him, N2.9 billion out of the money is for the state government while N1.6 billion is for the 13 local government councils in the state, based on the documents obtained from the federal government.