Senate panel probes N1.7trn contingency fund spent by MDAs

The senate committee on public accounts says it has commenced an investigation into N1.7 trillion service-wide votes (SWVs) spent by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) between 2017 and 2021.

Matthew Urhogbide, chairman of the committee, disclosed this on Monday during a meeting between his panel and heads of MDAs.

Urhogbide said that SWV was disbursed to federal agencies to take care of shortfalls in capital and overhead budgets.

He insisted that the beneficiary agencies needed to give explanations on how they spent the funds.

“SWV, which is also known as consolidated revenue fund charge, is more or less the country’s contingency fund in the yearly budget,” he explained.

“It is a huge sum of money kept for unforeseen expenditures. The recurrent expenditure part of the fund is what is referred to as SWV, while the capital part is called capital supplementation.

“The SWV is domiciled in the federal ministry of finance.”

Urhogbide directed Okolieaboh Sylva, acting accountant-general of the federation, who appeared before the panel to submit details of SWV disbursement as quickly as possible.

“We want you to submit details of disbursement of service-wide votes, let us have it as quickly as possible, please we want speed,” Urhogbide told Sylva.

“The other one that concerns you is the disbursement of service-wide votes from 2017-2021. You have not submitted the 2021 disbursement, let us have that of 2022 as quickly as possible.

“The reason is that we have 797 agencies to deal with. We have decided to put them on hold until we get your report for 2021 so that we don’t start writing fresh letters on 2021 again as soon as possible.

“We need to input it into our report, let us be able to know that you have exercised a level of cooperation with us, give us hard copies for our members to study.”

“This is the first time the senate is making inquisition into service-wide votes.”

Urhoghide said the committee had made several attempts to ensure that heads of MDAs account for SWV allocation, but the efforts were unsuccessful.