Some Federal Ministry of Labour officials have been accused of allegedly forging the signatures of some participants to justify the N208m spent on the Zonal Skill Acquisition it organized.
The Senate Committee Chaired by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, while scrutinizing the list of participants submitted by the Ministry at its last sitting, observed that a few persons signed for participants to enable them to collect their stipends in the six geopolitical zones.
The programme took place at all six geopolitical zones of the federation in 2021, with each zone collecting N35 million except the South-east which got N32 million.
The amount spent to fund the programme was drawn from Service Wide Vote (SWV) which has become the subject of an investigation by the Senate Public Accounts Panel.
According to the Senate Public Accounts Committee “the ministry collected N2.3 billion from the SWV between 2017 and 2021. The sum of N1.146 billion was meant for capital expenditure while N1.162 billion was for recurrent,” adding that the ministry failed to subject the expenditure to the Auditor General of the Federation’s scrutiny.
Officials of the Ministry, during the session, failed to make available the phone numbers of participants of the skill acquisition programme.
The Chairman of SPAC, Senator Mathew Urhoghide wondered why the officials paid millions of naira in cash for the programme instead of electronic transfer to pay the participants of the training programme
He observed that the signatures of many participants appeared forged while some wrote their names as their signatures.
“The signatures can’t stand the forensic test if we are subject to the forensic test. 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,” Urhoghide said.
Ms. Kachollom S. Dajua, the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, and Officials from the Ministry failed to explain convincingly to the Committee.
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