The Federal Ministry of Justice spent over N113.2 million in breach of the various provisions of the Nigeria’s financial regulations in 2019, the latest audit report of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) has disclosed.
The suspicious expenditures, according to the report, ranged from misapplication of funds meant for capital projects, misappropriation of other funds, to payment of contractors without supporting documents.
It said the transactions highlight issues of misapplication, diversion, and misappropriation of public funds.
Some of the transactions could also be payments for unapproved expenditures, the report added.
In an instance of the alleged breaches, the report stated that 12 payments totaling N35, 776,700 diverted from the ministry’s capital vote of 2019 were made to officials.
Instead of being spent on capital projects, the funds, according to the report, were diverted into air tickets, boot camp registration, servicing of monthly meetings, workshop fees and conferences, the report stated.
Giving further details of how the funds were expended, the report states that, in another transaction, “N30 million was raised as cash advance to an officer of the ministry.”
According to the report, the retirement particulars of the cash advance of N30 million was for a conference that turned out to be a “virtual meeting” in 2019.
The officers that attended the conference were from the South-south states, and from different agencies and commands, which the audit report said, “their offices should have catered for their logistics and other benefits instead of the (Justice) ministry.”
The spendings, the report said, violated the provision of Paragraph 316 (iii) & (iv) of the Financial Regulations, which states, “Virement from one Head of Account in the Recurrent Expenditure estimates to another Head of account in Capital Expenditure estimates shall not be allowed and vice versa…All applications for virement shall be collated by the Minister of Finance and submitted to National Assembly for approval before virement warrant shall be issued.”
The report said it was likely a case of “Misapplication of funds” and “Diversion of public funds”.
Credit: premiumtimesng.com
