House Representatives Com-mittee on Public Accounts has berated the office of the Head of Service of the Federation (OHSF) for failing to account for over N35 billion from the Service Wide Vote received from the Budget Office of the Federation, over a period of nine years.
Consequently, the committee gave the Permanent Secretary of the HSF, Mr Remi Adelakun, who appeared before it a two-week ultimatum within which to re-appear before it with relevant document on the missing sum.
At yesterday’s hearing, while Mr. Adelakun confirmed that the OHSF received only N17.6 billion from the Service Wide Vote between 2004 and 2012, the Budget Office insisted that over N52 billion was released to the office and rolled out the breakdown of the disbursement of the funds within the period in question.
According to the Budget Office, in 2004, the OHSF received N2.7 billion, N9.8 million in 2005, N701.7 million in 2006, N896.3m in 2007, N5.3 billion in 2008, N612.9m, plus another N70 million in 2009, N17.6 billion in 2010 while other releases were N13.6 billion in 2011 and N8.5 billion in 2012.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Solomon Adeola-Olamilekan, pointed out that the OHSF documents only referred to the N17.6b it received in the year 2010, saying that it was based on the figures given by the Budget Office.
It would be recalled that only on Tuesday, the Director General of Pension Transitional Arrangement Department (PTAD), Mrs Nellie Mayshak, told the committee that a whopping sum of N24 billion received from the service wide vote for the payment of the pension of the retired police personnel could not be accounted for.
