Ismaila Muhammadu Zakari, a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), has disclosed that the Federal Government disbursed more than N200 billion in unauthorized payments in 2019.
He claimed that the payments might have broken the nation’s Public Procurement Act because they were not accompanied by the required paperwork.
During a two-day Audit Reporting Workshop hosted by FrontFoot Media Initiative in Lagos, which concluded yesterday, Zakari disclosed several anomalies and flaws in the 2019 Federal Government Audit Report.
He added that the Auditor General had discovered these anomalies and that the Federal Government’s 2019 financial accounts could not account for over N100 billion, indicating that the money may have been misappropriated or pilfered.
The Federal Government’s lax internal controls, which make it challenging to stop and identify fraud, were also discovered, according to Zakari. He added the audit also revealed a sizable revenue shortfall as a result of the Federal Government’s ineffective tax collection activities.
According to Zakari, the audit also revealed that the government was spending exorbitant amounts on non-essential things and that the amount of debt it owed was rapidly increasing. According to him, the government should spend less on non-essentials and more on infrastructure, healthcare, and education. This is in line with the Auditor-General’s recommendation.
Other suggestions, according to Zakari, include the government creating a thorough debt management plan to make sure its debt is manageable and enhancing its efforts to collect taxes by broadening the tax base, streamlining the tax administration procedures, and toughening up on tax evasion.
In addition, the former head of ICAN stated that the federal government has to think about changing the constitution to require the president to provide the annual audited financial statements to the National Assembly in the same manner that he requests parliamentary approval for the budget.
