By Ezrel Tabiowo
Abuja
Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF), Samuel Ukura, yesterday differed with President Muhammadu Buhari, saying the template adopted for the N6.08 trillion 2016 budget estimates, was enveloped-based, as against zero budgeting earlier declared by the President.
Ukura disclosed this when he appeared before members of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts (SPAC) at a budget defence session.
The Auditor-General said though the federal government had initially intended to adopt a zero-based template, the reality surrounding the nation’s economy made it imperative for it to adopt the enveloped system used by the immediate past administration.
He added that the N2.9 billion budget estimates of his office for this year, was an envelope budgeting template handled by the Ministry of Finance.
“Budgets of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government this year are all envelope- based and not zero-based as it has been the case over the years, including that of my Office, which is even largely done for us by the supervising ministry,” he said.
But both Senators Akpan Bassey (PDP, Akwa Ibom North East) and Foster Ogola (PDP Bayelsa West), however insisted that his submission on the 2016 budget template ran contrary to the earlier one made before the joint session of the National Assembly by President Buhari in December last year when he presented the budget.
Responding to the concerns raised by the lawmakers, the Auditor-General stated categorically that “this year’s budget is enveloped, and not zero-based in anyway.”
He said: “It is envelope. The zero-based budgeting they wanted to introduce was not adhered to, at the end of the day.In zero-based budgeting, it is assumed that such expenditure does not exist, you start from zero and justify why that expenditure must be used. And at the end of it, the result you are going to get out of it. So, it is a system which is good and which would have also helped to set targets, but that wasn’t applied at the end of the day, perhaps, because it was hurriedly being introduced.”
He also remarked that “budget proposal and by extension, defence, is not about fighting, but discussing on what is made available for one to work it, because what they want, they give.”
Ukura was also taken up by the committee members on why his office did not deem it fit to audit the account of Department of Petroleum Resources ( DPR) for always budgeting N32 billion for recurrent expenditure covering staff strength of about 1,400, the same staff
strength of the AGF’s office with N1.8 billion votes for recurrent expenditure.
The committee members said they were not impressed with his presentation and performance in office so far.
Specifically, they said it was very amazing to them, that not a single audit alarm was raised from his office in the face of series of grafts being carried out in various government offices through budget padding under recurrent and overhead votes to outright stealing.
The committee through its chairman, Senator Andy Uba (PDP, Anambra South), however, sympathised with his office for being underfunded.
He said it was unacceptable for a very important audit office of the federation to be allocated paltry sum of N654 million for auditing of N6.08 trillion budget profile, vowing to work towards increasing the office votes in the budget on operational template.
“If you are not adequately funded, you are exposed to corruption and this committee will not allow that to happen,” he said.
