The Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation is the supreme audit institution of the federal government because it alone is mandated by the Constitution to audit the accounts of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
The Auditor-General for the Federation (AuGF), Anthony Ayine, gave this clarification in a statement sent on Monday to PREMIUM TIMES by his spokesperson, Oghenekevwe Ebireri, at the end of Mr Ayine’s visit to the Director-General, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Abubakar, in Abuja.
He said while there are other government institutions allowed to carry out inspections and oversight functions , his office has the exclusive duty of conducting all government audits.
“The law is clear. the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation (OAuGF) has the exclusive duty of auditing all statutory corporations, Commissions, authorities, agencies, including all persons and bodies established by an Act of the National Assembly, on behalf of the federal government, according to section 85 of the 1999 constitution,” Mr Ayine said.
The Auditor-General of the Federation who stated that the NIMC has strategic importance to the country, assured that his office would be willing to support and collaborate with it to help it deliver on its mandate.
“We (OAuGF) are keen about value addition. We believe our work should impact positively on the audited organisation, thereby helping it to function optimally.
“If there are issues on audit that are not clear, or areas where NIMC feels we can provide any form of assistance, our doors are wide open,” he said.
He said his visit was to familiarise himself with key institutions and agencies, given that the OAuGF needs to know its clients, for effective auditing.
Earlier, the NIMC DG informed Mr Ayeni that the commission needed the clarification on whose responsibility it is to audit its books outside the OAuGF, as it receives about seven letters from various organisations requesting it to submit its books for auditing, ostensibly to create fear.
Mr Abubakar also told the AuGF what he was doing to drive NIMC’s vision of creating an identity management system where every single Nigerian is accounted for.
Apart from registering over 14 million Nigerians in 2017 alone, Mr Abubakar said the commission was able to double the seven million it recorded in 2016, with about 36 million Nigerians on its data base so far.
At the Commission’s Data Centre, the NIMC DG explained to his guest the process of collecting, processing, analysing, saving and retrieving data, as well as some of the measures to ensure the safety of information gathered.
