By Ikenna Uwadileke
The House of Representatives’ Public Accounts Committee has set up a six man panel to further investigate an alleged disbursement of N1.47 billion loan to unspecified beneficiaries by the Nigeria Directorate of Employment (NDE).
The resolution followed the consideration of a query by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation in 2011, requesting NDE to give account of how the N1.47 billion was disbursed to some Nigerians under its skill acquisition scheme, since inception.
The Sub-Committee headed by the Committee Deputy Chairman, Rep. Ibrahim Baba and which has Reps. Legor Idagbor, Lawal Shuaibu, Sunday Adepoju, Olusegun Kehinde and Daniel Kolawole as members is to investigate the loan disbursement and establish particulars of alleged beneficiaries.
The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation had in the query expressed dissatisfaction that of the N1.4 billion disbursed, only N289.9 million was recovered so far, leaving an outstanding of N1.18 billion with the agency’s leadership unable to account for the whereabouts of the balance.
In response to a directive issued by the Public Accounts Committee on July 10, 2017, the Director-General of NDE, Mr Nasiru Mohammed furnished it with list of the beneficiaries and amount granted to each of them.
Others are copies of loan agreement and report of recoveries made from 1987 to 2010 and the copies of the audited accounts of the agency from 1997 to 2015.
He, however, told the lawmakers that the loan was disbursed by previous administrations of the agency.
However, while setting up the panel, Chairman, Public Accounts Committee, Rep. Kingsley Chinda (Rivers-PDP) urged the NDE to cooperate with the sub-committee in carrying out the task.
Chinda said: “Considering the fact that we will want to do a detailed work on the NDE query, we therefore ask the members to consider the query for NDE in 2011 paragraph 9.14 A to H”.
The aforementioned portions directly deal with misgivings and the need for explanatory notes accompanying the responses provided by the DG who said he was recently appointed to head the agency.
