The Senate through its committee on Public Accounts on Tuesday gave the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy FMoCDE, 48 hours ultimatum to account for N13.9billion it collected from service wide votes from 2017 to 2021.
The ultimatum given by the committee to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry , Dr William Alo, followed his failure to tender documentary evidence on how the N13.9billion was expended by the Ministry during the period under review .
Trouble came the way of the Ministry when the Chairman of the Committee , Senator Mathew Urhoghide ( PDP Edo South ) and other members quizzed the Communication Ministry Permanent Secretary on details of expenditure made from the collected service wide votes .
The Permanent Secretary along with Director of Finance and Administration from the ministry , incurred the wrath of the panel for begging for more time for the documentary evidence after blabbering for several minutes .
Irked by his request , the committee Chairman said such a plea would not be granted after four months of enquiry on how the said fund was expended by the Ministry .
He said based on records made available to the committee from the office of Accountant General of the Federation , a total of N13.9billion was disbursed to the Ministry from the Service Wide votes for special capital projects execution from 2017 to 2021.
The committee however granted the embattled permanent secretary another re – appearance before it on Thursday this week when he said N7billion out of the N13.9billion was expended on Galaxy backbone by an agency under it .
