The Senate has passed a bill for the establishment of the Federal Audit Service Commission in line with the current administration’s anti- corruption fight.
The bill was read the third time and passed at plenary presided over by President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki. The Senate mandated its leadership to engage the executive with a view to getting Buhari to sign the bill before the end of the eighth National Assembly.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Matthew Urhoghide, while presenting his report, explained that the commission would have a chairman and six commissioners from the six geopolitical zones of the country.
He also said the commission would have a representative of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation who would not be below the rank of a director. He said it would also have two retired civil servants, who had reached the rank of a director on grade level 17 and two persons appointed to represent the two professional accounting bodies in Nigeria.
Urhoghide said , “This bill is very important to the nation as passing it into law will form the bedrock for fighting corruption, which is one of the cardinal objectives of Mr President ’s administration .
“It will empower the Office of the Auditor -General of the Federation, who has the constitutional mandate of auditing all accounts of the federation to nip corruption in the bud, ensure transparency in government transactions.
“The bill will address acute manpower shortage existing in the Office of the Auditor – General of the Federation and bring it in tandem with supreme audit institutions and international best practices.
“The bill is not new to this eighth Senate. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on April 2016 and transmitted to the Senate for concurrence.
“The Senate passed the bill on Thursday, March 1, 2018. Due to differences in the version passed by the two chambers, conference commitee was set up to reconcile areas of differences. The bill was harmonised and passed by both chambers. The harmonised copy was forwarded to Mr President, for his assent on January 8 , 2019.
“It is over four months that the bill was sent to Mr President for assent but Mr President neither assented nor declined assent to the bill .
“That since Mr President did not communicate to the National Assembly as to why he withheld his assent to the bill, the most viable option for the National Assembly in view of the constraint of time, is to liaise with Mr President to ensure that he assents to the bill before the end of the Eighth Assembly.”
Meanwhile, the Senate also passed 10 other bills including the one that changed the name of Nigeria Football Association to Nigeria Football Federation.
The rest are National Assembly Budget and Research Office ( Est , etc) Bill 2019 ; Federal Audit Service Bill 2019; Institute of Transport Administration of Nigeria Bill 2019 ; Chartered Institute of Social Work Practitioners ( Est, etc) Bill 2019 and Suppression of Piracy and other Maritime Offences Bill 2019, among others.
Source – Punch