TWELVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE COMPLIANCE AUDIT REPORT, KADUNA STATE OF NIGERIA OF THE AUDITOR-GENERAL ON THE ACCOUNTS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF KADUNA STATE FOR THE YEAR ENDED DECEMBER, 2022.
10% LGA Share of Internally Generated Revenue (Ministry of Finance): the 10% statutory allocation to Local Government Councils: from the collections was N7.7 billion, however, the Accountant General reports showed only N800 million was disbursed to the Councils with a balance of N6.9 billion, that is only 1.10%.
Consolidated Revenue Fund Charges (Ministry of Finance): the amount and payees (Governor, Deputy Governor, AuditorGeneral for the state, Chairmen and Members of the following bodies, i.e. the State Civil Service Commission, State Independent Electoral Commission, Judges and State Judicial Service Commission and Assembly Service Commission) were not clearly captured in the draft report of the Accountant General for IPSAS compliance.
Weak Internal Control System in the area of Internal Audit (Ministry of Finance): a separate autonomous line of operation be established for Internal Auditors to strengthen the internal control system.
Audit Queries: five (5) additional queries were issued to three (3) MDAs during the year, which raised the number of queries of previous year’s report from fourteen (14) to nineteen (19) and one (1) query was resolved and closed respectively. Most ministries failed to either treat or even respond to these queries as required by relevant legislation (s), up to the time of issuing the report.
Audit Queries (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources and Ministry of Human Services & Social Development): the Ministries should be sanctioned for their inability to respond to audit queries.
Revenue Forecast: appears to be exaggerated or too bogus to achieve. Most MDAs were not able to realize revenue targets. So, I call on the Commission to put a lot of effort into producing a realizable forecast. In addition, I also wish to recommend that Revenue collection agencies are fully motivated and consultants are strictly monitored to ensure all revenues collected are remitted to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) accordingly.
Revenue Collection without Estimate: during the year under review, revenue to the tune of N1.1 billion was collected by two Agencies without revenue estimate. I recommend that the scenario should be given special consideration to curtail further occurrences.
Ministry/Extra Ministerial Department Revenue ShortFall: out of the grant total estimated collection of N104.1 billion, actual collection was N71.3 billion, a performance of 68.4% and shortfall of N32.9 billion.
Total Revenue: total revenue collected in the year ended, 31 December 2022, was N237.7 billion, representing 74.77% of the approved estimated collection of N309.9 billion.
Performance Audit: the concept of Value-For-Money Audit (VFMA) received top-most priority in the programme of this Office. Accordingly, verification was carried out in respect of some significant items of capital expenditure and some services said to have been provided. This was only possible in respect of expenditure items that were physical in nature. In the case of social services, such verification could not be effectively carried out due to the nature and circumstances under which such services were rendered.
Access to Documents: For the year under review, like the previous years, bills of quantity (BOQ) and other related contractual documents in respect of many projects from various MDAs were not made available to this office, for necessary action (s).
Budget Preparations: since the year ended, 31st December, 2016-2021, have been on cash accounting basis, whereas Accountant-General’s draft reports have always been translated into accruals basis (IPSAS) within the same period. But in the year under review, there was a greater improvement in this regard by the Planning & Budget Commission. Efforts were made to ensure migration to the Accrual IPSAS Budget to conform with International Standards to avoid parallel operations.
Lets engage, ask the right questions and hold the government accountable.
Y.I.Goje
Active Citizen
#CALPED
