Oyewole Ikusagba
A recent beam of searchlight on activities at the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel has unraveled a monumental fraud that has robbed the nation no less than 8.5 Billion naira.
The detection of the fraud was made possible by the Federal Government introduced Treasury Single Account {TSA) which mandated a single account for all government finances, thus making corner cutting difficult for light fingered government officials.
But despite the close knitted financial environment, the Mines and Steel Ministry shortchanged the nation the whopping amount between 2015 and 2017 by not remitting generated fund into the central account.
This was the period the incumbent governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, was Minister over the ministry.
Sources said an audit report carried out on the ministry recently exposed the sharp practice and came out with details on how the money were annually ferreted away.
Details given reveals that in 2015, the ministry generated revenue was N2,214,925,333.58, in 2016, it increased to N2,333,351,664.97 and peaked in 2017 at N3,485,358,251.54, totaling N8,538,380,450.19.
The report of the Auditors was said to have sent a staggering shock to the presidency which now feel porous, having earlier thought the finances of government would be secured with the TSA devise which is believed to be foolproof.
With the recent discovery from the Ministry, government was said to be shocked to know that people could be as daring as to boycott the process and is now poised to be more circumspect in monitoring the financial transactions of government ministries and agencies.
