The Niger State House of Assembly has constituted an ad hoc committee to investigate nine out of the 25 former local government chairmen in the state indicted by the Office of the Auditor General for allegedly mismanaging contract financing loans given to them.
The chairman of the ad hoc committee, Ahmed Bello, representing Agwara Constituency, stated this during an interaction with the affected former local government leaders in Minna. The councils include Agwara, Shiroro, Suleja, Katcha, Wushishi, Tafa, Borgu, Rijau and Bosso.
The committee was set up following a report from the Office of the Auditor General to the Niger State House of Assembly Committee on Public Account alleging that the affected former nine council chairmen failed to use the contract financing loan judiciously.
Bello said: “Based on this, the House constituted an ad-hoc committee to investigate how the contract financing loan was expended by former local government chairmen.
“We are not using our position to witch-hunt anybody but to investigate the issue that has to do with taxpayers’ resources and to correct some mistakes so that the new chairmen will not repeat the same mistakes.”
Speaking with journalists shortly after the interaction, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government, Alhaji Aliyu Abubakar, explained that an audit was conducted to ensure that things were in order and to see if there were errors and shortcomings to be corrected.
According to him: “We hope the new chairmen will learn from the mistakes of the former chairmen by working in line with financial regulations.”
