President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Auditor-General of the Federation to ensure that all outstanding audit queries are conclusively resolved within 30 days.
He has also ordered that henceforth, all audit queries must be responded to within 24 hours.
The orders came on the heels of President Buhari’s displeasure on hearing that audit queries remained unanswered for long periods, sometimes running into years, under previous administrations.
However, all that is set to change with the president’s irrevocable commitment to tackle administrative and bureaucratic corruption head-on.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media and Publicity), Garba Shehu, confirmed the directives in a statement on Sunday.
“The era of impunity is gone. The President is taking the war on corruption to the civil service. He is not happy that standard operating procedures and financial regulations are no longer being observed as they should.
“President Buhari will ensure that public officials and civil servants in the service of the Federal Government pay a heavy price from now on for violating financial regulations or disregarding audit queries”, Mr. Garba said.
Mr. Garba further stated that the President was determined to put an end to the present situation in which, rather than respond to legitimate audit queries, violators of financial regulations in the Federal Government resort to threatening, bribing or mounting other forms of social pressure on auditors.
“On his watch, President Buhari wants to see firm action against those who violate extant financial regulations, not the prevarications and shenanigans that went on in the past in the form of endless probes and public inquiries”, he said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment