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By Levinus Nwabughiogu

House of Representatives has summoned the Minister and Permanent Secretary of Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu as well as Head of Service of the Federation, HoSF to appear before it this week.

The Chief reason for the call was to furnish the House with relevant information on unaudited accounts of Natural Medicine Development Agency.

Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Wole Oke who issued the notice on Friday remarked that available records showed that for 9 years, the agency’s accounts had remained unaudited.

Oke spoke at the ongoing investigative hearing on the refusal by non-treasury and partially funded agencies to render their audited accounts between 20011 and 2019.

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The lawmaker directed the Director of Finance who represented the agency at the hearing to also come with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry under it.

“Come with his employer – the Minister of Science and Technology and the Permanent Secretary as well as Head of Service of the Federation.

“Let them come and hear the story themselves. You have budgetary allocation but you didn’t render account,” Oke said.

Available records revealed that the agency got allocation of N377,931,365 out of which the sum of N255,222,949 was for recurrent while N122,708,417 was for capital expenditure for the year 2016.

Also in 2018, the agency got total allocation of N1.105 billion out of which N246,234,918 was for personnel, N56,176,596 was for overhead, N302,411,514 was for recurrent while N802,710,432 was for capital expenditure.

According to the Auditor General of the Federation, the Agency submitted only 2013 audit account while 2014 to 2019 were still outstanding.

Meanwhile, the House Committee has agreed to conduct Status of Inquiry into the finances of Radiographers Registration Council of Nigeria for failing to render account to AGF office between 2015 and 2019.

Vanguard Nigeria News