COVID-19: Nigerian lawmakers are angry with the State Taskforce on over conflicting reports

Nigerian Lawmakers Gets Angry With The State Taskforce on COVID-19 over conflicting reports on its expenditures.

The House of Assembly ad-hoc Committee on COVID-19 frowned over the replication in some of the figures presented before the committee.

Alhaji Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, The Nation had reported Task Force Committee Chairman, who is also the Secretary to the State Government, told the House of Assembly his committee spent N795,015,000 on its activities.

But when asked to give the amount spent so far, the Task Force presented N808,636, 000 as its expenditure.

Maliki Madaki Bosso, The Chairman of the ad-hoc committee,  noted replication in some of the figures presented before the committee.

“Some things are conflicting from the presentation made last week and the document presented today by the Chairman.

“He told us last week that they have spent N795, 015, 000 so far including the N85million paid to the AEDC for power supply during the lockdown but today, he backtracks that the N85million was not part of their expenses.

“We also discovered that the N808,636, 000 was the amount spent from the document presented while N76million spent on fumigation of the entire state was not part of the total amount.

“As a committee, we are not satisfied with his explanations and that is why we told them to go back and give us accurate figures because we need to present same before the whole house and the Niger lites want to know how taxpayers money are being spent,” Bosso said.

Matane, on his part, admitted there was a computational error in figures on the document presented to the committee, adding that the figures will change because the Task Force activities are continuous as long as the pandemic has not ended.