Accountant General of the Federation Oluwatoyin Sakirat Madein has told the Public Account Committee of the House of Representatives that the government does not have an accurate records of its assets and liabilities.
Madein who was responding to the 2020 audit report of the Auditor General for the Federation, said even though the MDAs were required to carry out a valuation of their assets and liabilities, there has never been budgetary allocation for the exercise which she said will be very expensive to carry out.
The oAuGF in the report on the ‘Negative Net Assets’ expressed worries over negative net assets of Federal Government of Nigeria totaling N33.3 trillion.
The total assets stood at N10.1 trillion while the total liability was N43.4 trillion thereby leading to a negative net asset of N33.3 trillion.”
The report further showed: ”Federal Government’s total current assets was N1.7 trillion while total current liability was N16.3 trillion thereby leading to a difference N14.6 trillion.
“This means that FGN will not be able to meet up with its current obligation/commitment. This also suggests that Federal Government of Nigeria is faced with a high debt burden which could hamper the development of key infrastructures.”
She admitted that without the asset valuation of the government, the financial statements of the government cannot be said to be complete and will not give a fair view of government finances.
Asked to confirm whether the government has an asset register containing the list of all government assets, she said: “I have not seen any asset register. We can only build one when all MDAs have submitted their list.”
She said MDAs were supposed to carry out such valuation since 2019, adding that she was not sure is that has been done.
She assured the Committee that all issues in the audit report will be addressed by her office and that the various MDAs will be instructed to henceforth apply the required standard in preparing their financial statements.
She said that the MDAs have not been able to prepare abs submit stand alone account because they were still studying the IPSAS which was introduced in 2016 and was supposed to be used by them in preparing their statements.
