ABUJA—THE Auditor General of the Federation, AuGF, Mr Anthony Ayine, yesterday said auditing 471 Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs with 1500 workforce was herculean and made his agency not to perform optimally.
Speaking while defending his agency’s 2018 budget, Ayine said “it should be noted that the Federal Government of Nigeria has 471 parastatals and agencies and the AuGF is required to comment on their audited financial statements. Due to inadequate capacity and the complex nature of some of the accounts, the review and comment on the audited financial statements of some of the agencies have to be outsourced. It is important to note that the current workforce will significantly be depleted when 54 officers and 139 officers retire from service this year.
“If no further recruitments are made to improve the strength of the workforce, this depleted workforce could constitute critical threats to the functioning of the office. For the office to function and achieve results, personnel cost budget ceilings of N1,909,022,726 should be replaced by a new personnel cost budget ceilings of N3,424,510,028.55.”
Responding, chairman of the Committee Kingsley Chinda,PDP, Rivers said “if this government truly wants to fight corruption then it must properly fund the office of the AuGF. ”In the civilised climes strong institutions are built not persons because here it is who pays the piper that dictates the tunes and that is why the audit department should be independent of the three arms of government.”
