The House of Representatives Committee. on Public Accounts, on Thursday, expressed dismay over the inability of the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation (OHSF) to account for over N35 billion from the Service Wide Vote received from the Budget Office of the Federation over a period of nine years.
Consequently, the committee has given the Permanent Secretary of the HSF, Mr Remi Adelakun who appeared before the committee on the whopping sum of N17.6billion earlier recorded against the office by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, a two-week ultimatum within which to re-appear before it with relevant documents on the missing money.
At the yesterday’s hearing, while Mr Adelakun confirmed that the OHSF received only N17.6 billion from the Service Wide Vote between 2004 and 2012, the Budget Office insisted that over N52billion was released to the office and rolled out the break down of the disbursement of the funds within the period in question.
According to the Budget Office, in 2004 the OHSF received N2.7 billion, N9.8 million in 2005, N701.7 million in 2006, N896.3 million in 2007, N5.3 billion in 2008, N612.9 million plus another N70 million in 2009, N17.6 billion in 2010 while other releases were N13.6 billion in 2011 and N8.5 billion in 2012.
The Chairman of the Committee, Honourable Solomon Adeola-Olamilekan, pointed out that the OHSF documents only referred to the N17.6 billion it received in the year 2010, saying that based on the figures
given by the Budget Office, there was a disparity of almost N35 billion and requested for the documents for the rest of the years in question.