The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives has lamented the delay in the submission of audit reports by the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAuGF) was affecting its legislative oversight work.
This is just as the committee vowed to ensure timely submission of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Reports by the OAuGF.
The committee's chairman, Hon. Bamidele Salam, stated this while speaking at a retreat held for members of the legislative panel and its staff as well as other stakeholders held in Ghana over the weekend.
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He said, "In 2023, when we took over, we had asked that our stakeholders, the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Auditor General of the Federation work together to ensure that we close the huge gap.
"Don't forget that by the time we came on board, we had a 2019 report that was submitted. After then, we had been able to get the 2020, 2021 and 2022. As good as that appears, it's still not good enough because it's 2026.
"As soon as we get back from this retreat, we have set a target also to convey a meeting of the Accountant-General, Auditor-General, Financial Reporting Council and other major stakeholders to set a definite timeline that will ramp up the submission of the reports for 2023, 2024 and 2025. We do expect that before the end of this year, at least we'll be able to close those gaps substantially."
Salam said the retreat has provided a platform for introspection, a review of the performance of each and every person, both in their own personal aspiration and official aspiration in the outgone year, and more importantly, it also provided a platform to set an agenda for 2026.
He added that, "we believe very strongly that an opportunity like this enables one to be focused. When you have a set of targets, a set of performance index that you set for yourself at the beginning of a year, it gives you a roadmap so that as the year progresses, you can evaluate and see which of those targets you have met, which ones have not been met.
"If you need to also review your strategies for the meeting of those expectations. And then at the end of the year, allow us one to also have a very good evaluation of how the year has been. And the expectation that we have overall is that it will result in greater productivity for the work that we do as a department of the National Assembly."
On his part, deputy chairman of the committee, Hon. Jeremiah Umaru, said the panel through the efforts of the chairman and members had been able to help the government recover a lot of revenues and in blocked leakages in the year under review and previous years.
"So in the year 2026, part of the reasons why we're here is to be able to see how we can efficiently and effectively drive this process more by engaging all the stakeholders. And of course, before we engage all the stakeholders, we need to also in-house come together to build capacity in our staff and of course some of our members to see that this process is done very well.
"Because if you look at the leakages in the system, it's mind-boggling, you know. So that's the essence of us coming here. And with the kind of chairman that we have, I believe that, and with the cooperation of members, I believe that we'll be able to achieve this as a committee," he said.
Also speaking, Clerk of the Committee, Ogunsanya Titus, said the retreat was a positive move as regards the activities of the committee.
"A race where you prepare for will definitely turn out very well. While what you did not prepare for will turn out to be a failure. So that is part of the retreat. That is for us to plan, to review what we have done in the past, see where we have achieved, where our challenge is, and how to move forward from there.
"So that is the main purpose of this retreat. And at the end of the retreat, I believe that we are going to turn out a good output, input and output to the success of the committee. It's for the Public Accounts Committee and the Secretariat of the Committee. It's to set the agenda for 2026.
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"So the staff can be prepared, they get the vision, you know, they brainstorm on strategy, then they get ready to deploy in the course of the year. The Public Accounts Committee is the only constitutional committee in the National Assembly because it is created by the Constitution and its essence is to ensure that governance is achieved through prudent use of resources, proper allocation, proper utilization, and that MDAs are held to account on how they've used taxpayers' money, pretty much," he added.
On his part, Consultant to the committee, Dr Samuel Ibrahim, stated that the training was critical to the panel and timely as the topics were pretty much hard and soft to help with their technical skills and to also help improve their soft skills.
"For the topics, you know, that focus on stakeholders management, for example, is soft skill focus and is to build their capacity and their ability to engage with stakeholders to elicit information, to achieve their outcome through soft power as against hard power," he added.
