Given the significance of the position and the difficulties with accountability in the country’s public institutions, Nigerian audit stakeholders have tasked Shaakaa Chira, the recently appointed Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF), with exercising creativity in the performance of his duties.
Speaking in separate interviews, the stakeholders noted that one of the main issues facing the next Auditor-General is going to be insufficient financing.
Chira’s appointment as the substantive AuGF was accepted by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu last month, in accordance with the Federal Civil Service Commission’s (FCSC) recommendations. The Senate last Thursday confirmed him.
Adolphus Aghughu, who retired from that role in September of last year, is replaced by Chira.
Olusegun Elemo, Executive Director of PLSI, a civil society organization, responded to the Senate confirmation by saying it has been long overdue for a genuine AuGF to be appointed.
“This appointment is what we have been waiting for; the reason it has taken so long is because of internal strife, which ultimately hinders development,” he stated.
Elemo stated that by ensuring that public officials are held accountable and reducing corruption in the public sector, the audit promotes development.
He stated that one of the first things “we expect the office will do is to look into the timeliness of audit reports” following the appointment of the new Auditor-General.
“As you are aware, the National Assembly has not yet received the audit reports for 2020, 2021, and 2022.”
That is ludicrous in and of itself because the report of the Auditor-General has still not been made available to us approximately three quarters of the way into the 2020 fiscal year.
“We feel that passing the audit bill that the National Assembly is working on will improve the timeliness of the audit report. The House of Representatives has already passed it, and we hope the Senate will do the same and send it to the president for signature.
“After that is finished, it gives the legal framework into which all the participants in the audit cycle, such as the National Assembly’s public accounts committees, the auditor general, and the accountant general, will key into, and everyone will be bound by the law to know who should do what, when it should be done, and how it should be done.”
Elemo further noted that Nigeria’s development gaps and accountability issues cannot be resolved by the audit procedures alone.
“As a performance auditor himself, we hope that the current Auditor-General will bring his experiences to bear upon the audit approaches and methodologies they employ,” he stated. We anticipate conducting far more audit performances than just the routine financial and compliance audits at this time. We focus more on financial auditing than compliance auditing, which isn’t even close to enough to fully explore the accountability issues. Thus, our hope is that he will apply that audit strategy more skillfully.
Regarding resources, Elemo stated that there has been a question over whether the office has adequate funding and staff to implement such audit procedures, but he added that it is a necessary step.
The fact that we spend between N21 trillion and N25 trillion annually and only N5 billion to audit it is disgraceful. Of that N5 billion, 90% is spent on staff and ongoing expenses, with only roughly 10% actually going toward the actual audit work that needs to be done in the field. Several MDAs are fleeing because of this. We hope he would concentrate on such issues,” he said.
He said it’s excellent that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is pushing for more funding for that position rather than the N5 billion or N7 billion that it currently receives, which is undoubtedly insufficient. “In actuality, it is insulting that you are auditing it with N7 billion while spending N25 trillion. These are problems that must be resolved,” he remarked.
Speaking next, Ferdinand Onyema, a former employee of the Office of the Auditor-General, offered advice to the new AG regarding how to improve employee morale given the nature of their work: staff welfare.
“Having only been gone for a year or so, I am aware of the office’s issues, which primarily stem from a lack of resources and personnel,” he remarked. The task at hand is quite extensive, and due to inadequate funding, certain functions are currently being assumed by organizations such as the EFCC, ICPC, and others, which are meant to utilize the output of the OAUGF as their input.
According to Onyema, the office has not hired new employees in a few years, and the number of employees is declining. “There is a gap now that there was a large retirement of professionals in the last two years due to age or years of service. The seasoned professionals would have trained the new hires if they had been hired, he claimed.
