Exposed: How Civil Defence Deducted N526.458 million As Pay As You Earn, But Failed To Produce Receipt of The Payment By FIRS

As for the Civil Defence headquarters, the sum of N526.458 million was deducted between January and December, 2015 as Pay As You Earn (PAYE), but the evidence of acknowledgment of receipt of the amount by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) was not produced for audit report.

“The Commandant General has been requested to produce the evidence of the receipt of N526.458m by FIRs,” the report said.

The report said the sum of N40.615m was recorded into the transcript as payments for the period under review whereas a corresponding entry of N27.939m was recorded in the analysis book, leaving a discrepancy of N17.054m unaccounted for.

In the month of July 2015 alone, the report said, payment vouchers totalling N41.331m “were misclassified to other votes other than those provided in the approved estimate, contrary to Financial Regulation 417,” the report added.

Similarly, between February and December, 2015, there were variances in the monthly payment of salary of the Civil Defence. The variances, both in surplus and deficit, ranged from -1.31 percent to 7.68 percent.

“It was worrisome that there was no authority, variation advice and variation control raised and maintained to support each month variation as stipulated in the Financial Regulations,” the Auditor General said.

There was also an infraction of N3.070m for the payment of Garnishee Order between March 2 and April 4, 2015 without proper authorization and another N2.110m claimed to have been remitted to FIRS without evidence.

The Auditor General’s report indicated further that a payment voucher of N5.523m was raised to pay an insurance broker for the year 2014 without any evidence of insurance policy generator and no computation of how the amount was arrived at. Another N6.578m paid for the renewal of insurance policy of the Civil Defence motorcycles could not be accounted for.

Yet, the Civil Defence paid another N19.245m to an insurance broker on November 5, 2015 without stating the classes of the insurance even as the payment voucher was not produced for sighting, with a separate N6m being paid as insurance cover on NSCDC’s assets nationwide without evidence.

The report also said that the Bauchi State Command of the NSCDC failed to maintain a vote book for the control and monitoring of its expenditures as a result of which various amounts totalling N1.939m allocated during the period and 37 vouchers amounting to N1.666m were not posted on the vote book, contrary to Financial Regulation 402.

On missing rifle, the report said a G3 rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition were “not seen physically as they were purported to have been taken away by the previous commandant who was on posting to another command.”

The Auditor General said all the infractions were communicated to the Commandant General in July 2016, but that despite a reminder in August, no response was forwarded in that regard.

Source: Daily Trust