A Service Wide Vote, which is also known as Consolidated Revenue Fund Charge, is more or less the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.
According to a report by Vanguard, investigation revealed that the Service Wide Votes collected by the Ministry of Justice were not subjected to the scrutiny of the Office of Auditor General of the Federation and the Senate Standing Committee mandated to oversee it.
During the investigative hearing, members of the Senate committee discovered that the line item in the money collected by the Ministry from the Service Wide Votes in 2019 for capital project was designated as ‘critical needs’, according to the Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) produced by the Office of Accountant General of the Federation.
In the record of the Ministry, there was nothing to indicate that N650 million was received, but the AIEs from the Office of Accountant General of the Federation revealed that N650 million was released for the Ministry for ‘critical needs’ for capital expenditure in 2019.
In addition, N955 million via AIEs was released to the Ministry from the SWV in 2017. But the record made available by the Ministry showed N549 million, with a difference of N406 million unaccounted for.
In 2018, the Ministry claimed to have received N492 million but releases from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation showed that N591 million was released, a development which means N99 million was not accounted for.
In 2019, the record from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation showed that the Ministry collected N650 million for ‘critical needs’ but failed to produce a record to back up the collection and utilisation of the amount.
In 2020, the record showed that the Ministry collected N62 million for recurrent expenditure. In 2021, N1.4 billion was released to the Ministry from the Office of Accountant General of the Federation through AIEs for recurrent expenditure. However, the Ministry claimed to have received only N400 million.
The Ministry could not present letters of request and approval for the money collected from Service Wide Votes.
In response to issues raised by the Senate committee, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, B.E Jeddy, said the Ministry would search for the relevant documents and present them to the lawmakers on November 10.
At the hearing, chairman of the Senate committee, Matthew Urhoghide, noted that the fund was not audited by the Auditor General of the Federation because there was no budgetary provision.
“It was not audited by the Auditor General at all, there are no budgetary provisions. Go and tell everyone that benefited from it and give us the necessary documents,” he said.
The permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice is expected to provide the required information.
