The Senate has moved to issue warrant of arrest on Heads of Agencies who benefited from N5 trillion Service Wide Votes (SWV) between 2017 to 2021.
The development was sequel to the commencement of investigation into 252 government agencies reported to have taken part in the disbursement without notifying the National Assembly Panels that is mandated by law to oversight the agencies.
A Service Wide Vote (SWV) which is also known as the Consolidated Revenue Fund Charge is more or less the country’s contingency fund in the annual budget.
The Chairman of the Senate Public Account Committee, Senator Mathew Urhoghide, explained that the Investigation has to do with disbursement of Service Wide Votes between 2017 to 2021 adding the Service Wide Votes has become major component of nation’s budget considering amount budgeted annually for it in the budget.
He noted that the Committee has to see how the money collected from Service Wide Votes is being expended because there are confusion on the approval of the Votes, as he noted that the lawmakers “want to see how this money is being expended. There are confusion on approval, we want to really get to know what is going on.”
He added that any agency who fails to appear the Committee will not hestitate to issue warrant of arrest on the head of the agency because it has been discovered that many agencies collected this fund without informing the National Assembly Committee saddled with responsibility to overnight the agency.
He emphasized that the committee will not tolerate the absence of Galaxy Backbone, Ministry of Interior, Budget Office, State House, NBET who are scheduled to appear before the committee.
He added that Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) collected N180 billion from the votes, NBET collected N2.9 billion and Ministry of Humanitarian, received N445 billion from the Votes.
Among the 252 Ministries, Departments and Agencies expected to appear in the ongoing Investigation of Service Wide Votes between 2017 till 2021 are Ministry of Information and Culture, Defence, NHIS, Police, Ministry of Power, Bank of Industry, Water Resources, National Assembly, Public Complaint Commission (PCC), Directorate of State Service (DSS) and Presidential Amnesty Programme.