Chairman Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Sen. Matthew Urhoghide, has said that corruption in the country would reduce when proper auditing systems were in place.
He said this at the budget defence by the Office of the Auditor-General in Abuja on Wednesday.
Urhogide said that corruption had continued unabated in government business because the office of the auditor general was not equipped to carry out its responsibilities.
“Fighting corruption the first line is the duty of the office of the auditor general of the federation.
“No doubt that if we are able to put out all these systems in place correctly and we are able to check the account properly of course whatever is allocated to all the MDAs and we are able to audit them, the issue of corruption would reduce tremendously in our country.
“But the audit system we are running right now is such that our MDAs and indeed the account of the federation is not subjected to any precaution in terms of checking corruption rather our resources are ploughed into agencies that are fighting corruption.
“There are things that we have thought of in the senate when we passed the Federal Audit Bill for the President to sign.
“Today the Federal Audit Bill has not seen the signature of the President and we expect that this 9th senate being one of our own legislative agenda, we are going to ensure that the audit bill is signed in to law,” he said.
“When it is signed into law by the President, I believe part A of that Bill when it becomes an Act will strengthen the office of the auditor general of the federation.
“And then Part B which has to do with the establishment of the Federal Audit Commission where you are going to have the right personnel trained that will carry out auditing of the account of the federation.”
On his part, Vice Chairman of the committee Sen. Ibrahim Hadejia said that “if you do not digitise and find a way to automate our process, we will be wasting our time.
“l hope this budget will help you to start working on how to automate your audit system.”
The auditor general, Anthony Ayine, said that the sum of N188.4 million was appropriated in 2019 Appropriation Act for the office but as at today, the office has not received any capital fund for year 2019.
