The Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) Mrs. Oluwatoyin Madein has been issued an ultimatum to appear before the House of Reps Ad hoc committee investigating non-remittance to National Housing Fund (NHF) and utilisation of funds on Sept. 7 or face arrest.
The threat was issued by the committee on Thursday when the Director, Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) appeared before it over non-remittance to NHF.
Earlier, IPPIS, a department in the Office of AGF was invited to explain the reason for its non-remittance to NHF.
Although the Director of IPPIS presented a letter to the committee explaining the reason the AGF could not appear in person, the reps member insisted that she must be in attendance in the next meeting.
According to the committee, the IPPIS Director must also join the AGF on Sept 7 as he was unable to give satisfactoryl responses to the questions thrown at him.
The Chairman of the committee, Rep Dachung Bagos said, “We cannot take the same man who could not give us the information we need from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
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“The speaker requested a fair hearing from us and we wouldn’t want to be seen as witch-hunting anyone. We would give the fair hearing for the AGF to appear another day.”
The IPPIS had claimed it had challenges in remitting to NHF.
The committee also asked Remital, a private organisation that remits the funds, to also reappear on Sept 7 because IPPIS was not ready to answer questions from the committee.
Also appearing at the investigative hearing are the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), United Bank for Africa (UBA), Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, and Heritage Bank.
Bagos said there was a need to know the investment of the banking sector according to the NHF Act that set up the NHF.
In his presentation, Mr Eke Ogba, General Manager, UBA, said it had remitted about N2.5 billion from January 2011 to July 2023 to NHF.
“This is a huge sum. We have given the summary monthly. We have also given the summary of what is deducted monthly from each worker.
“I do not know about investment; we only deduct and remit. I will get the details of the investment; all we have is how much has been deducted from each staff member, ” he said.