The House of Representatives, has promised to revisit the N11.3 trillion allegedly spent by the Federal Government on the turn-around maintenance of Nigeria’s refineries between 2010 and 2020.
Hon. Bamidele Salam, Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, made the disclosure while speaking in Abuja on Thursday.
According to him, the Green Chamber intends to tackle the rising cost of petroleum products brought about by the fuel subsidy removal.
He said the house is disturbed by the comatose state of Nigeria’s refineries in spite of the huge sums of money “expended” to put them in shape in the last decade.
He said the era of wasting public funds on white-elephant projects without consequences would be over.
The lawmaker equally said the committee would thoroughly examine the accounts of the federal government and those of the MDAs in order to expose wastage, inefficiency and corruption in the public sector.
None the less, he expressed optimism that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration would reposition the Nigerian economy by fixing critical infrastructure like power, roads and rail transportation.
He noted that these can only succeed if there is real value for money on all public contracts, as well as adherence of government agencies to the provisions of extant laws and regulations on budgeting, procurement and jobs certification.
Hon. Salam said many roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure for which humongous sums of money were budgeted and spent in previous years had become dilapidated.
The chairman added that many other projects were abandoned by contractors after receiving full payments.
He said the increased in public revenue occasioned by removal of subsidy and a merger of foreign exchange trading windows, would only make the desired impact, if government blocked wastages and strengthened its audit institutions.
He appealed to Tinubu to urgently appoint a substantive Auditor General for the Federation in accordance with the provisions of Section 86 of the Constitution.
He explained that the non-appointmemt of a substantive auditor-general for close to a year, had impacted negatively on Nigeria’s public finance and accountability ratings by global organisations.
