THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’s consolidated Financial Statement for 2022 has been delayed due to challenges in reconciling the Consolidated Revenue Fund bank statement with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The Accountant General of the Federation, Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, made this revelation on January 8, 2024, when the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts paid an oversight visit to the Treasury House in Abuja.
According to a press statement on Friday by Bawa Mokwa, the director of press at the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Madein stated that since her resumption of office in May 2023, the Federal Government’s Consolidated Financial Statements had been prepared and audited up to December 31, 2019.
“In collaboration with the Auditor-General of the Federation, we have prepared and Audited 2020, 2021 CFS while 2022 is ongoing,” she said in the release.
“It would have been completed but for problems we have regarding the reconciliation of Bank Statement for the Consolidated Revenue Fund with the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
The AGF also reported that aggressive collection campaigns were being used to address Nigeria’s revenue challenges, which she said had increased financing for capital projects, overheads, and staff expenses in 2024.
She mentioned that, with the National Assembly’s approval, her office had suggested improvements to the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System and the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System to strengthen financial management.
Responding to the AGF, the House Committee on Public Accounts chairman, Hon. Bamidele Salam, pleaded with the AGF to submit the 2022 Consolidated Financial Statement as soon as possible, in accordance with the 1999 Constitution.
He called for stronger steps to stop revenue leakages through automation and frequent audits, highlighting worries over low revenue repatriation by government-owned enterprises.
The office of the AGF, also, vowed to work and improve fiscal transparency and solve revenue shortages.
The Explainer reported that the National Water Resources Institute was indicted for lavishing over 267 million naira on staff and contractors working for the institute.
The revelation was made in the annual report of the Auditor General of the Federation on the non-compliance, and internal control weaknesses in ministries, departments and agencies of the government for the year 2021.
The Explainer stated that the expended amount was not appropriated for the 2021 fiscal year of the institute.
The payments were extra-budgetary expenditures and it contravened the sections of the Financial Regulations (2009).
