Senate queries NDLEA for spending N200 million on ‘Security Votes’ without budgetary provision

The Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) has queried the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for spending N200m without budgetary provision

The committee chaired by Senator Matthew Urhoghide relied on 2016 report of Auditor General of the Federation to issue the querry.

The query reads, “A sum of N169,336,264.36 was spent on Security Votes in 2015. Further examination of the Agency‟s Budget for that year revealed that there was no appropriation for Security Vote by the National Assembly.

“The Chairman/Chief Executive should produce the authority for this expenditure or recover the sum of N169,336,264.36 and forward relevant details for verification “
In another query, the agency spent N135 million on Security vote against N103 million budgeted which resulted into N32 million excess.

The query reads further, “The sum of N135,301,756.93 was spent by the Agency as against the sum of N103,216,923.00 appropriated.
“This resulted in excess expenditure of N32,084,833.93 (on Security vote for the year 2016, contrary to the provision of Financial Regulation 313 which states that “No expenditure on any subhead of the Recurrent Estimates in excess of the provision in the Approved estimates or Supplementary Estimates may be authorised by any officer controlling a vote without approval of the National Assembly”.

“Financial Regulation 419 also states that “Officers controlling votes are solely liable for unauthorised expenditure in excess of the sum allocated.”

The query asked the Chairman/Chief Executive of the agency to justify the excess expenditure of N32,084,833.93.”
However, NDLEA in a written submission said,” there was no enough allocation for security vote and being an Agency that carry out most of its activities on information and intelligence, the management has no option than to make provision from its recurrent allocation for security and information from sub-head.

Explaining further the NDLEA said there was no excess spending of security votes as claimed by the Auditors, in 2016 year of assessment.
The response said the sum of N103 million was spent that year leaving untilized balance of N785,189.57