Presidential Initiative On Continuous Audit Saves Nigerian Government N208.4 Billion

President Buhari

By CLEMENT NWOJI, Abuja

The Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), has  within two years saved the Nigerian government over N208.4 Billion which would have gone into pockets of private individuals through various forms of corrupt practices.

The said amount of N208.4 billion according to statistics released by the PICA, were saved between 2016 when it was set up to the year, 2017. While the sum of over N97.9 billion was saved from being frittered away in 2016, the sum of N110.4 billion was saved in 2017

The Director of Special Projects, Ministry of finance, Dr. M.A.Dikwa, who doubles as the Secretary of PICA, disclosed these figures while making presentations on the theme, “PICA: The journey so far” at a one-day seminar for Finance Correspondents organized by the Ministry of finance.

PICA was set up in 2016 by the Federal government with the mandate to validate controls, assess risks, prune personnel costs, ensure compliance with the public financial management reforms, among other things.

He explained that through the diligent efforts of the PICA, over 50, 000 ghost workers were uncovered and removed from the payroll of the federal government; 800 ex-employees of the government who had continue to collect salaries from their former various Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were stopped; and 400 staff from different MDAs collecting double salaries were found and recovered.

Dr. Dikwa further listed that other discoveries made by the PICA through which government funds were being stollen include over 32, 000 employees with deficiencies who are currently being investigated and about 12, 024 staff collecting their salaries in non-commercial banks.

He said that the number of the non-commercial banks involved were 75; micro finance banks were seven; and three finance companies; one Bureau de Change and one development finance institutions.

On the whole, he said a total of 681 employees used more than one salary account or move from one salary account to the other with all the accounts in non-commercial banks.

Currently, he said 11 persons with multiple salary accounts had been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other relevant security agencies for investigation, recovery of funds stollen by them, adding one of them had over 200 bank accounts.

On the whistle blower policy of the government, Dr. Dikwa said that it has help to checkmate corrupt practices, disclosing that it has received 8,373 communications, received 1,231 tips, investigating 791 cases, concluded investigation of 534 cases while a total 40 cases had been referred to the EFCC, ICPC and DSS.

Also in his presentation, the Accountant General of the Federation, Idris Ahmed, disclosed that the net inflow into the Treasury Single Account (TSA) is N8.9 trillion since effective implementation of the Account in 2015 to date.

He made the disclosure while speaking on the theme, “TSA: A veritable tool for transparency and accountability in public financial management”.

On the relevance of the TSA, the Accountant General of the Federation who was represented by the Deputy Director/Coordinator TSA/e-Collection, Funds Department, Office of Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Sylva Okolie, said it was used to unify all government accounts into one pool account with Central Bank of Nigeria.

He cited that while over 17, 000 bank accounts with various commercial banks were closed and the funds in them moved to CBN, about N70 billion was however lost in distressed banks in the country.