Philip Nyam 
…Decry late Submission of Reports
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the House of Representatives has promised to ensure the timely submission of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 reports to the Committee by the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAuGF).
This is even as the committee lamented the delays in the submission of earlier reports by the Auditor General’s office, which has affected its work.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Bamidele Salam, made the promise while speaking at the retreat held for members of the Committee and its staff and other stakeholders held in Ghana over the weekend.
He said, “In 2023, when we took over, we had asked that our stakeholders, the Accountants General Federation, the Auditor General 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 that, 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.
“And as soon as we get back from this retreat, we will set a target also to convene 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 report 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 outgoing year, and more importantly, it also provided a platform to set an agenda for 2026.
He added, “We believe very strongly that an opportunity like this enables one to be focused. When you have a set of targets and a set of performance indices 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 meeting those expectations. And then at the end of the year, allow us 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, the deputy chairman of the committee, Hon. Jeremiah Umaru, the committee, through the efforts of the chairman and members, has been able to help the government recover a lot of revenues and block leakages in the year under review of previous years.
He said, “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 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”.
Also speaking, Clerk of the Committee, Mr Ogunsanya Olufemi Titus, the retreat was a positive move as regards the activities of the Committee.
He said, “A race that 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.
“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 utilisation, and that MDAs are held to account on how they’ve used taxpayers’ money, pretty much”.
On his part, Consultant to the Committee, Dr Samuel Ibrahim, stated that the training is critical to the Committee and came at the right time.
He said, “So the topics are pretty much hard and soft topics to help with their technical skills and to also help improve their soft skills.
“For the topics, you know, that focus on stakeholder management, for example, is a 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 opposed to hard power.
“Then you have other topics that are more technical that will help them deploy their hard power abilities to achieve their constitutional mandate”.
