“It is very unfortunate that we have not noticed the concerted efforts, determination to undermine the office of the auditor-general of the federation (through the recent budgetary downplaying of the 2023 budgetary appropriation for the office of the auditor-general)”
– Oluwole Oke, Chairman, House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Accounts
Ordinarily, a nation’s determination, even sense of mission, on any particular subject or policy issue is best understood as a derivative of the weight of financial commitment accruing to that policy. Hence, for instance, a nation’s spending of a substantial amount of resources rearming or re-kitting its military is read off as putting teeth to their bite. Rhetoric, however elegant, cannot substitute for resolution and consistent spending on particular policy goals. Consequently, the recent controversy regarding the comparatively paltry amount of allocation to the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation speaks volumes, as pointed out in the opening quote sourced from Oke.
Recently, Oke lamented that the budgetary appropriation for that office was slashed somewhat drastically to less than half of what was demanded, leaving it at a slim N5.112bn, making it almost equal to what was appropriated for local and foreign trips of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN). That is why Oke concluded that we are dealing with a case of subversion of an institution, which is critical to the success of the anti-corruption programme.
It is no secret that financial allocation remains an instrument of promotion, and alternatively, demotion in terms of the capacity of a national institution to perform its lawful duties. Established by section 85(1) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the office of the auditor-general is responsible for the annual presentation of an audited report of all ministries, departments and agencies. Specifically, the 1999 Constitution states that “the public accounts of the federation and all offices and courts of the federation shall be audited and reported on to the auditor-general who shall submit his reports to the National Assembly…” Regrettably, however, in spite of the awesome responsibility placed on it, the institution has never received its due recognition in terms of compliance with its orders and directives, and indeed, as is the case in the 2023 Budget, its due financial recognition in the national scheme of things.
Currently, and as revealed by Oke, things are so bad that the body does not have enough funds to carry out elementary and mandatory tasks such as the preparation of the 2021 and 2022 annual reports. Unfortunately, rather than mitigate this situation, we appear to be adding insult to injury by further reducing the financial wherewithal of that important establishment. For several years, and during the tenure of the former Auditor-General, Anthony Ayine, there were persistent outcries about the repeated refusal of several MDAs to comply with directives, instructions and routines of the organisation. In a particular year, for example, only 51 MDAs submitted audited reports while over 300 significantly failed to comply with the submission protocol. In other words, the relationship between government establishments and the auditor-general’s office is full of jest, lacking in decorum and the recognition that the body is constitutionally established for the important work it is doing in the area of anti-corruption and financial due process.
We have continued to treat it as an irrelevant and noisemaking body which is to be tolerated rather than obeyed or complied with. A careful perusal of the successive instructions issued by the auditor-general will reveal that from year to year, the number of defaults has continued to rise. Why is this so, you may ask? It is mainly because no sanctions are administered for defaulting and the MDAs can virtually get away with blue murder as nobody has cared enough to hold their feet to the fire. It is one thing for public officials to wax eloquent at public events and functions about the value and virtues of accountability and the importance of auditing. It is quite another to do the right thing and take the right steps that will complement the nation’s much touted anti-corruption agenda. This, perhaps, is the perspective from which Oke is coming when he lamented that the happenings in financial terms regarding the office of the auditor-general amounted to a determined subversion of a lawfully set-up institution mandated to carry out enormous tasks on the presumed road to accountability and due process.
Professor Kole Omotosho once put it that “the reason little things count is because they point to and foreshadow bigger things.” Budgetary matters may look like minutiae compared to big national issues, but the way we handle ostensibly little matters like budgetary allocation signpost our attitude to much bigger things and often gives us out as lacking in depth and rigour. As it stands now, the picture we have painted is that having ignored the office of the auditor-general for a long while, the prime makers of our national budget, in this case, the Ministry of Finance and Budget Office, have decided to go for the jugular of the auditor-general of the federation by virtually proposing to bury it under a rubric of necessity, lack and scrounging to do the most elementary things.
If the anti-corruption agenda were more holistic and properly conceived, that office, now reduced to complaining about its lack of resources, should have been made one of the cornerstones of anti-corruption, thus complementing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as well as the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission which remarkably were far better endowed in next year’s budget than the office of the auditor-general.
As this columnist has repeatedly pointed out, one of the reasons for public cynicism regarding the anti-corruption struggle is that we say one thing and do another, and as in most other things, do not do our homework before making bogus announcements and dreaming big about projects that are not executed with gravitas. The least that should happen is an upgrade by the legislature of appropriation of funds to the office of the auditor-general. There are various items in the budget from which we could profitably make savings if we are serious about finding the resources to run that office according to constitutional standards and stipulations.
To be sure, enhanced financial allocation does not always translate into better performance or effectiveness. However, it is unlikely that a governmental organisation will perform creditably and with honour in the absence of financial endowments. Moreover, it should be noted that the attitude of the political elite over time, to the office of the auditor-general, betrays a Freudian outlook that they really do not give a hoot about the fortunes of that office and will not have cared if it was scrapped.
As Nigeria prepares to elect a new government, we should bear in mind that what gives us away often is not our rhetoric or announcements of new policies but the commitment and seriousness we bring to bear on true reform. If there is to be a genuine change, come 2023, we must begin the process of overhaul and the introduction of new outlooks in the search for a new Nigeria.
