Noah Ebije, Kaduna

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufa’i has challenged Auditors in the Public service across the country, to safe the nation’s institutions from collapse by ensuring that the country’s dwindling resources are judiciously utilised.

Governor El-Rufa’i made the call in Kaduna on Monday, while addressing a 5-day Retreat for internal Auditors in all MDAs from across the country, organised by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

Represented by the Deputy Governor, Dr. Hadiza Balarabe, the Governor said, Nigeria is faced with enormous challenges and leaner resources than since the creation of the country.

He said the meagre resources must be judiciously utilized and jealously protected to ensure efficient and effective service delivery.

According to El-Rufa’i, “As Nigeria and the world at large grapples with the challenges of a global health pandemic and an economic slowdown, we are faced with enormous challenges and leaner resources than ever in our history since the creation of our country.

“There cannot be a better time and a greater need for fiscal transparency and accountability than now. There is a need to make our government and institutions sustainable to continue serving our people, providing economic, social, and security services. The meager resources that come in must be judiciously utilized and jealously protected to ensure our mandates’ efficient and effective delivery.

“As internal auditors, you have an important role in the public service which places at the vanguard of accountability. Your job schedule charges you to help ensure that available resources are correctly and judiciously deployed. While most professionals and workers may or not be sufficiently familiar with the rules, auditors are responsible for helping all personnel to comply with the regulations, and raising the flag when there is a breach. That is the fundamental relationship between those who audit and those who are audited. Audits ensure the systems are credible, efficient, dependable, and even replicable.

“My sincere wish and prayer are that you emerge from this retreat with better knowledge, capability, and commitment to ensure and guarantee a better audit process, and help to further promote Fiscal Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability in the public service. I call on you all to remain resolute and firm in carrying out your responsibilities as Internal Auditors, helping your various ministries, departments, and agencies to attain excellence,” El-Rufa’i said.

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He stressed that, Kaduna State Government has placed accountability and transparency at the core of its governance reforms, pointing out that, “that is why we implemented the Treasury Single Account in September 2015, and have automated our procurement process, began digitizing the land registry, and prohibited cash collection of government revenues.

“We are the first state to sign up to the Open Government Partnership, and we have real-time monitoring of our projects all around Kaduna State. The Kaduna State Government is also a keen participant in the World Bank-assisted State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme. Many state governments have also keyed into the programme by implementing fiscal sustainability plans.

“We have raised our IGR from N13bn in 2015 to N44bn in 2019 without hiking tax rates. The Kaduna State Government is also working to retain its ranking as the Number One place for doing business in Nigeria by the World Bank,” he stressed.

In his address, the Accountant General of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Idris, said, an audit data capturing Centre has been established in the Office of the Accountant General to secure an interface with the IPPIS and GIFMIS platforms through which government transactions can be viewed online.

He also said that, a number of IT tools have been provided to enhance the operations of the Audit Monitoring Department of the Office of the Accountant General, while assorted appropriate hardware and software and their requisite licenses have also been acquired.

According to him, “participants will be taken through the functionality of these softwares during this retreat for appreciation of the advantages of acquiring these tools in order to enhance competence and efficiency in carrying out internal auditing functions.

“I should emphasize that at a time like this; Internal Auditors must be computer literate and must be vastly knowledgeable in public financial reforms and processes. From
the programme of this retreat, papers focusing on the functions and operations of the various Treasury departments in the OAGF involved in the Public Financial Reforms Projects will be presented”.