The House of Representatives, yesterday, demanded from the Accountant-General of the federation, AGF, Ahmed Idris, details of all the funds donated by the Federal Government to the states of the federation, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, and the relevant ministries tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Oluwole Oke issued the directive to the AGF at a meeting convened by the committee to ascertain the amount of public funds so far expended by the government to fight the pandemic.
The committee had queried the AGF on the total amount so far released by the Federal Government to the states, the NCDC, the Ministry of Health and other agencies of government in the fore-front of the fight against the disease.
Oke had also asked the AGF to provide details of how much funds he had transferred to the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 PTF and provide details of N22.1 billion so far donated by public spirited individuals and organisations to the government.
The AGF however said, “There is a special account we opened with the CBN and that is what we borrowed from to meet the needs of this emergency.”
He also told the lawmaker that there was a total donation of N139.439billion received by the Federal Government from the donations by the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House, adding that another N300 million came from a philanthropist from Kano State.
The Committee Chairman and members however, insisted that the details of the donations be made available to the members at the next sitting date on June 15, 2020.
Source: VanguardNG
