The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives has handed a 72-hour ultimatum to 6 Chief Executive Officers of government agencies to appear before it.
The directive follows the CEOs absence on Monday to respond to audit queries amounting to over N20.85 billion.
Sixty agencies of the Federal government are listed to defend audit queries before the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives.
The Auditor General had issued queries to the organisations to the tune of over N20 billion.
Six of them were to appear this day before the Committee but members were taken aback that only one, the Rural Electrification Agency, wrote in to say its Chief Executive Officer was outside the country.
Among those conspicuously absent were heads of the Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited, NigComSat, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC, Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, NEPZA and three others.
Other agencies summoned to appear within the stipulated 72 hours are the Chief Executive Officers of the Rural Electrification Agency, Nigeria Export Promotion Council and the Federal University of Petroleum Studies, Effurun in Delta State.
The Committee Chairman and other members expressed shock at their absence, describing it as disregard for the parliament as an institution.
While the REA is to defend unapproved expenditure amounting to about N1.4 billion, NigComSat is to defend an expenditure of N1.05 billion while NEPC is to defend an expenditure of N264.5 million.
The NUPRC is to defend an unexplained expenditure of N275.6 Million and $35.73 Million which it allegedly failed to transfer to the Consolidated Revenue account of the Federation, While NEPZA and FUPRE are to defend unexplained expenditure of N15.62 Million and N2.23 Million.
