Senate Tuesday blamed the National Assembly over the alleged misuse of N1.51 trillion Special Funds Accounts by the Executive since they were established in 2002, saying the lawmakers failed in their oversight responsibility to monitor the accounts efficiently.
The Senate however, directed its Public Accounts Committee to further investigate disbursement of loans and payments from the accounts and report back within four weeks. It also upheld the recommendation that a law be passed to regulate the operations of the Special Funds Accounts.
The three Special Funds Accounts are the Stabilisation Account; Ecology Account and the Natural Resources Account.
The Upper House took the decision while adopting the report of the Senator Ahmed Lawan-led Public Accounts Committee which brought out incidents of alleged misuse of the Special Funds Accounts.
Debate on the revelations contained in the report generated serious outcry from lawmakers, who blamed the situation not only on the inability of relevant committees to conduct efficient oversights on the accounts but also on lack of ability to scrutinise the country's revenue base at the presentation of annual budgets.
Even the Senate President, David Mark attested to the evidence of complacency on the part of National Assembly and pointed out that it was a wake-up call on the legislators.
He said: 'The problem of the fund is that aside lack of guidelines, we have also, through committees be held responsible for not taken pains to oversight how the funds are utilised. That is truly an indictment on the National Assembly; it is a wake-up call on National Assembly to do its work properly.
'If we have been following the funds since 2002, it would have been addressed earlier. It is right to look at these ones to see how the disbursements relate to areas they were disbursed. In all, we shared in the blame in these disbursements.
'We urged the committees to go back and look at those ones that were not misapplied and find out who has paid back loans and those that have not paid back. Also, for all intense and purposes, those who have taken loans from it should be asked to pay back.
'This report has nothing to do with political parties and our contributions showed that all of us are displeased with what happened. It is in the national interest that this kind of thing is not allowed to continue. We need to go by the draft bill which was proposed to spell out how the funds should be disbursed', Mark said.
Speaking in the same vein, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, said it was not about political party in power but a share case of bad governance.
According to him, no state from the South East benefited from the loan. He suggested that the case be referred to Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as a way of curtailing impunity in misappropriation of public funds.
Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, blamed the situation on too much discretion by the President. He maintained that the National Assembly had failed the nation by not monitoring the accounts.
'We have failed. How come we allowed such huge sums to be spent without guidelines? Perhaps, we need to invite our former colleagues who headed committees that were supposed to oversight the accounts. The Senate had a month ago passed the first reading of a bill seeking a minimum jail term of two years for public officials who abuse special funds accounts
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