The Auditor General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura, on Thursday said that the zero based budgeting system was not adopted in the preparation of the 2016 budget due to time constraints.
Speaking before the the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Mr. Ukara said that the present government intended to adopt the zero based budgeting as a template, but it was forced to adopt the enveloped based budgeting due to reality. He said the Envelope system was introduced by former Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala.
He explained the zero based budget, stating that it was advantageous for Nigeria as it will help to check the corruption in the budgets of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
“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”, according to him.
The Minister said the N2.9billion budget estimates of his office for 2016 largely prepared by the Ministry of Finance., “Budgets of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government this year are all enveloped 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”.
“It is envelope. The zero-based budgeting they wanted to introduce was not adhered to, at the end of the day”, Ukura said.
The committee however queried the Auditor General on why his office has not audited the account of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), which they said, always budgets N32 billion for recurrent expenditure covering staff strength of about 1,400, which is the same staff strength of the AGF’s office, which takes only 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, for not a single audit alarm raised from his office in the face of series of grafts being carried out in various government offices through budget Paddings under recurrent and overhead votes, to outright stealing.
The committee through its chairman, Senator Andy Uba (PDP Anambra South), however sympathized with his office for being underfunded by the government.
According to him, it is 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, saying it will work towards increasing the office votes in the budget on operational template.
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