By Chinonso Alozie, Owerri
The Imo State House of Assembly, Tuesday said that the factual findings on the alleged misappropriation of the local government funds under Emeka Ihedioha’s administration would be sent to the Economic Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to take action.
The Chairman House Committee on Public Accounts Committee, PAC, Chigozie Nwaneri, alongside members of his committee, disclosed this in Owerri, even as they said that the work on the report had gone up to 50 percent.
This is coming after several attempts made by Ihedioha, to stop his probe using the court had failed. However, Nwaneri, representing Oru East state constituency said that the House had involved the services of external auditor and an accountant to conclude the report as submitted to the House by the auditor General of local government in the state.
The chairman of the committee Nwaneri said among other things that, “This Public Accounts Committee, PAC, started under the previous administration of Emeka Ihedioha, and it has existed for almost a year now. “And since this present government came in we have not reshuffled this committee.
This committee has remained the same as when the previous government was in office. “And nobody can say that it is biased. We are just going by the book as submitted to us by the Auditor General of local government.
We are doing fact findings; the work has already being done. We are also trying to find out if the Auditor General is not trying to witch-hunt, anybody.”
He insisted: “We have the rights to look into the dealings of local government funds. If you look here, these are audited reports, annual reports of local governments, when they are through with these reports they send it to this committee, the Public Accounts Committee to do our fact findings in case they make mistakes.
So, we have the legal rights to do our job.” “It really not a probe we are doing a fact-finding we have a lot of documents submitted by different local government areas we have engaged an external auditor and an accountant.
We are looking into the report to make sure that the Imo state funds were not misappropriated. “We have gone about 50 percent working on the report. You know it takes time and we must make sure we get it right.
Because whatever we submit to the Economic Financial Crimes Commission, is final. We are not after anybody or any ministry.” Other members of the committee, present included; Kanayo Onyemachi (Owerri West) Arthur Egwim (Ideato North) Dominic Ezerioha (Oru West) According to them that the moves made by Ihedioha to stop the probe was a waste of time and that Ihedioha was not properly guided on his actions as such he was not informed on the constitutional powers of the state House of Assembly.
