By Ayodele Oni
Five Years after the outbreak of the dreaded COVID-19 killer disease, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives has come hard on some Federal Government Ministries and Departments over how the funds were spent.
The Reps Committee has ordered the Federal Ministry of Industries, Trade and Investment, along with its past and present Permanent Secretaries, to jointly refund a whopping sum of N75 billion to the covers of the federal government with immediate effect.
The Committee chaired by Bamidele Salam, PDP-OSUN, gave the directive on Thursday at the resumed probe of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the federal government on alleged mismanagement of COVID-19 intervention funds.
The Committee frowned that the Ministry had shunned the three invitations extended to it based on audit queries from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation on the alleged mismanagement of the intervention funds.
It also grilled the Officials of the Federal Ministry of Health over the alleged mismanagement of the intervention funds and directed the officials to reappear before it within seven days with relevant documents on how N10bn was squandered.
On the other hand, the Rural Electrification Agency was given 24 hours within which to submit its defence on the several billions of Naira allocated to it and to appear before it on Monday for the defence of the submission.
The Chairman, who vowed that the Committee would do everything to recover all mismanaged funds by the MDAs, declared that there would be no hiding place for the officials retired or serving responsible for such acts.
