The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will be probing the National Environmental Standard and Regulations Agency (NESREA) over an alleged N1.25 billion extra budgetary spending in without due appropriation process 2019.
The information was shared by Chairman of the committee, Wole Oke, during the appearance of the Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Professor Aliyu Jauro, in response to the query from the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
Prof. Jauro in his defense, alleged that NASREA has approval from National Assembly to to spend its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR); a response that was received with discontent from Oke.
The Clerk of the Committee was then directed to write to the chairmen of the Committees on Environment of both chambers of the National Assembly to appear for further explanation.
“From details available in the 2019 submitted audited report of the agency, there was no evidence of its budget having passed through the rungs of required legislative process of submission of its estimates from the Presidency.
”No evidence of its receipt at the legislature or that it was debated on at plenary by the House before being committed to relevant committees for the necessary checks before it was compiled along with those of other MDAs and sent to Mr President for assent to become an Act.’
“If this is so, then it amounts to the two chairmen of the NASS Environment Committees just sitting back in the corners of their offices and unilaterally approving the NESREA budget and ordering commencement of expenditure without Mr President’s assent, amounting to an acts of illegality and gross insubordination.”
Oke further instructed that letters be sent to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, as well as the Clerk to the National Assembly, Ojo Olatunde, asking them to produce evidence of correspondences between the executive and the legislature on the movement of the agency’s budget for the year 2019.