By Gift Chapi Odekina
The House of Representatives on Monday moved to investigate the Nigerian Communications Satellite, NIGCOMSAT over multiple infractions discovered in the audited accounts of the agency.
The committee also declared the management of the agency incompetent to run such an important agency successfully.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Finance Rep. James Falake stated this when the Management of the Agency led by its Managing Director, Mrs Abimbola Alale appeared before it at the resumed investigative hearing into the under-remittance by major Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs),of the Federal Government.
The Committee said it was taken aback that the submission made available to it was full of infractions and doubted the professional competency of the Accountants who audited accounts and the inabilities of the Managing Director and the General Manager, Finance, Mr Adamu Idris to provide satisfactory answers to most of the questions put to them
According to Rep. Falake, ” things can not continue like this, you are not competent, we have to rescue this Agency from you, in fact i f I have my way, I will recommend your sack
“We can not continue with this exercise, the management will have to leave , go and perfect your records and you will represent for consideration because the one brought now can not stand the test of time, we will have to start from 2012 financial year”
The Chairman of the Committee who later addressed news men said that the Agency would be placed on status enquiry to determine its financial status
According to him, “we are continuing with our investigations on revenue monitoring to ensure what happened in the past don’t continue. And the essence is to make sure that all revenues meant for the consolidated revenue accounts are remitted as and when due and every outstanding accounted for
“We have just taken on the Nigeria Communications Satellite limited (NigComSat). We looked at their presentation and we were not pleased with what we saw, so we ordered for a status enquiry
“The documents that were presented to us where supposed to have been prepared by professionals, but when we saw what they brought, we all were embarrassed and that was why I said if we have our ways we recommend severe sanctions against, we would save the agency from them
“Although, we don’t have the power to hire and fire, but it’s within our purview to recommend sanctions which could include sack of a given officer, so we can actually do that””.
