This may not be the best of times for Nigeria’s accountant general, Ahmed Idris, as he has been queried over under-reporting of N400 billion overdrafts by the Federal Government.
This was disclosed when the Auditor General of the Federation, Anthony Eyine, submitted his 2017 Audit Report to the National Assembly, recently.
Other infractions the report noticed include errors in the operation of TSA, and improper inclusion of TSA Suspense Balance as Investment Income as well as the accountant general’s inability to explain inadequate disclosure of aids and grants amounting to N6.6 billion.
“We relied on third-party account balance confirmation provided by CBN alongside the balance contained in the Statement of Financial Position to arrive at the following findings: there was a net overdrawn bank balance with MDAs in the sum of N400,341,840,719.24 as at 31st December, 2017.
“A further examination of the books revealed that 15 accounts had debit balances that means assets amounting to N2,595,778,779,855.57 while four accounts had N2,996,120,620,574.81 as credit balances signifying liability”, the report read in part.
It further revealed that, “the overdrawn balance of the Federal Government (per the CBN) as of December 31st, 2017, stood at N2,455,817,954,214.86.
“A comparison of the names of accounts listed in the financial statements and those shown in the CBN accounts balances confirmation letter indicate that there are 19 accounts while the CBN list acknowledged only four accounts.
“From the four accounts, three were found to correspond with the financial statements, however there was a difference between the CBN figure and the balance in the financial statements in respect of OAGF Cash Transit–Treasury Single Account (TSA) recurrent account in the sum of N2,576,603.81.
“There was also a TSA e-collection account in the CBN Statement but this was not shown in the financial statements.”
On the Accountant General’s inability to explain inadequate disclosure of aids and grants amounting to N6.6 billion, the report said “there was no information about the donors or the recipient MDAs to verify the occurrence, accuracy or completeness of the transaction”.
SOURCE: opr.news