N799m expenditure: Senate queries NPC
The Senate on Tuesday frowned at the manner in which the National Population Commission (NPC) spent a whopping N799 million capital vote out of N800million within three weeks of receiving the budgetary allocation without going through procurement process.
The Red Chamber also queried the commission for engaging in skewed recruitment of staff this year in contravention of the Federal Character principle despite it was asked to redress same anomaly done in 2017.
Consequently, the Senate Committee on Population and National Identity has ordered NPC to furnish it with details and evidence of executing its capital projects worth N799m in compliance with extant procurement laws and as well as halt further recruitment of staff.
Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Sulaiman Hunkuyi, who led the committee on an oversight visit to the NPC headquarters in Abuja, gave the orders after interfacing with senior management members of the commission.
“From the point of view of an accountant, from the point of view of the procurement laws, I don’t know how procurement processes could concluded within three weeks and about N799 million expended. Something must be definitely wrong.
“On the recruitment you have just done, more serious crime has been committed compared to the anomaly we observed in the previous recruitment exercise. We were not carried along as stakeholders. This cannot stand,” Hunkuyi said.
