The Akwa Ibom state government on Wednesday denied involvement in a fraudulent multi billion Naira expenditure in the 2019 budget.
An investigative report sponsored by John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the International Centre for Investigative Reporting published in a state-based newspaper had shown that the State government made scandalous expenditure in the 2019 budget.
The report fingered top government officials such as the SSG, Commissioner for Finance, Commissioner for Special Duties,and the Accountant General for acts of corruption adding that the State government incurred over 10billion Naira on aircraft maintenance, purchase of cars,special projects and governor’s hospitality among others.
However, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Brr.Ini Ememobong in a press conference in Uyo said the information used in writing the investigative report was gotten from unauthentic source noting that there were typographical errors in the first budget which were later corrected.
According to the Information boss, “annual account statement is always derivable from the state budget . But after the financial report was made public , some mistakes were discovered and we quickly raised a memo to notify the mistakes and later came out with authentic and corrected version of the report.
“The authentic version which was sent to the legislature and the Auditor General were inputed on the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) platform, and agrees with the details supplied.
“It is therefore startling to find an extensive ‘investigative’ publication based on a spurious report, which has a similar cover design with the authentic report.
“As a government, we take financial reporting very seriously and have consistently complied with the IPSAS requirement, though generally acknowledged as cumbersome, due to its uncommon coding system.”
