The Senate, through its Public Accounts Committee, has queried the Ministry of Labour for the alleged forgery of signatures of participants that attended the zonal skill acquisition organised by it.
The programme was organised in all six zones of the federation in 2021, with N35m for each zone, excluding the South-East, which got N32m.
The money, which was taken from the Service Wide Vote, was subjected to investigation by the Senate due to the ministry’s failure to subject the expenditure to the scrutiny of the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
Presenting the lists of participants to the committee chaired by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, the lawmakers observed that few persons signed for participants to collect their stipends in the six geo-political zones, as the ministry failed to provide the phone numbers of participants of the skill acquisition programme.
Urhoghide questioned why the money was paid in cash rather than via bank transfers to allow for proper detailing.
He further questioned that the signatures had no name of the bearers.
The committee members further buttressed the observations by the chairman, questioning the ministry on why it didn’t use e-payment to pay the participants of the training programme.
“The signatures can’t stand forensic test if we subject them to forensic test,” members of the committee stated.
Urhoghide added,”The money ought to have been paid straight into the accounts; you see one person signing for many people. There is a clear violation of E-payment.”
However, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Ms Kachollom Dajua, and officials from the ministry failed to give convincing explanations to the committee, arguing that due process was followed in paying the participants at the zonal skill acquisition training.
The ministry collected N2.3bn from Service Wide Vote from 2017 to 2021 out of which N1.146bn was meant for capital, while N1.162bn was meant for recurrent expenditure.
