ABUJA—The House of Representatives Committee on Finance yesterday announced that the executive had spent over N3 trillion in the last five years without the approval of the National Assembly.

Beside the extra-budgetary expenditure by the Presidency, the House Committee is also worried that there is a fresh accumulation by the Federal Government of local and foreign debts to the tune of over $20billion.

This fresh debt pile up is happening barely four years after the country paid over $32 billion of debts accumulated for a period of over two decades to exit the Paris Club of creditors.

At an interactive session with newsmen yesterday, the members of the Committee, led by Rep. John Enoh(PDP/ Obubra/Cross River), said the Committee will look into the declining rate of the foreign reserves, financing of National Assembly budget, rise in the internal and external debt of the country and poor implementation of the 2010 budget by the Ministry of Finance.

“Our committee, in the course of our numerous and painstaking oversight, has discovered that over N3 trillion has been spent by government ministries and agencies without the approval of the National Assembly, as stipulated by the 1999 Constitution.

“We have found out that more than 80 percent of these agencies remit nothing or far less than what they generate to government coffers and yet they take billions of naira as budget every year,” Enoh said.

Buttressing his principal’s point, Deputy Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Leo Dilkon (PDP/Pankshin-Plateau State), said most of the agencies drop just about 1 percent of what they generate to government coffers.

Of all the monies approved by the National Assembly for ministries and agencies, Dilkon said less than 30 percent had been released for each agency by the Ministry of Finance and Bureau for Public Procurement.

Rep. Labaran Dambatta (PDP/Dambatta-Kano), in his words, decried that “universities, Colleges of Education, the National Hospital and several other agencies of government have refused to remit monies they generate for government into government coffers, and each time you want to raise alarm, they will tell you reasons outside the constitution, why they must not remit to the federation account”.

Earlier, Chairman of the Committee said the National Assembly was worried by the dip in revenue and financial frivolities threatening the Nigerian economy.

“The committee is worried about the declining rate of our foreign reserves and the accumulation of fresh local and foreign debt profile. We are also disturbed by the poor implementation of the 2010 budget.

“These worries are coming even after we (the National Assembly) have taken serious pains to amend the due process (Public Procurement) law to simplify its implementation.

“For every amendment we have done on the due process law, we have done it with the aim of simplifying its implementation but yet, we continue to experience this failure in our budget,” Enoh said.

The committee chairman said lawmakers would in a few weeks be engaging with Customs, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, “where the committee will be interested in finding out how the executive’s response had been to the decline in foreign reserves, debt pile up and how to fully implement the budget.