Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber has commenced its investigation on the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for carrying out spending which it tagged ‘security votes’ without appropriation by the National Assembly.
Point News247 reports that the investigation follows audit queries issued against the NDLEA in the ‘Auditor-General for the Federation’s Annual Report on Non-Compliance/Internal Control Weaknesses Issues in Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government of Nigeria for the Year Ended 31st December, 2019.’
The Acting Auditor-General of the Federation, Adolphus Aghughu, had presented the report to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Ojo Amos, on September 15, 2021, while the Senate and House Committees on Public Accounts began investigation of the queries.
In its written response to the query, the NDLEA however said, “There was no enough allocation for security vote and being (an) agency that carries out most of its activities on information and intelligence, the management had no option but to make provision from its recurrent allocation for security and information from sub-head.”
The query read in part, “A sum of N169,336,264.36 was spent on Security Votes in 2015. Further examination of the agency’s budget for that year revealed that there was no appropriation for Security Vote by the National Assembly.