The federal government has ordered forensic audit of all its agencies responsible for generating revenues.
The directive was issued by the committee set up by the National Economic Council (NEC) to investigate how funds generated from the sales of crude oil was remitted to the federation account under the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Edo State governor Adams Oshiomhole stated this yesterday while briefing journalists on behalf of the committee at the end of its meeting at the presidential villa, Abuja. He added that two audit firms, KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have been engaged by the federal government to audit all its revenue generating agencies. He noted that the committee could not rely on the audit report submitted by PwC because it was limited in scope.
According to him, the PwC’s report only covered the allegation by former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that monies from crude oil sales were not being remitted to the CBN. Oshiomhole said that PwC complained to the committee that it could not do a thorough job because two critical agencies to the probe, the CBN and Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) did not submit relevant documents to the probe.
Oshiomhole added that the committee was properly briefed by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation and other agencies before taking the decision to appoint the audit firms. He said: “We have decided to appoint two audit firms, KPMG and PwC to carry out a forensic audit of all these agencies. The Federal Government will decide what to do with the findings.
“Some of us are not accountants and two of my colleagues who are accountants are not finding it easy understanding the way these agencies operated their accounts. We don’t know how long It will take, but they must do it within time and must be very thorough but must exercise best professional judgment.
”PwC said some organizations did not cooperate with it and so could not do a thorough audit. That was due to the political environment prevailing then. But now, the present administration is conducive. Buhari is willing to provide the enabling environment. KPMG said it refused to participate because the environment was not conducive”.
