The House of Representatives’ Committee on Public Accounts has commenced investigation of the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission for spending N1.19bn in the 2018 and 2019 financial years without appropriation by the National Assembly.

The probe is based on an audit query issued in the report the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation, while alleging that the NIPC had an approved budget of N194m in 2018 and N180.6m in 2019 but spent N700m and N871m in those years, respectively.

The query partly read, “N180.6 million was budgeted for overhead cost in the year 2019, but NIPC ended up spending N871 million, excluding depreciation, without the approval of the National Assembly. There was extra-budgetary spending on overhead in the year 2018 without supplementary approval from the National Assembly: N194 million appropriated but NIPC spent over N700 million.”

The committee consequently ordered the management of the NIPC, which is an agency under the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, to explain the expenditure the expenditure. Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, directed the NIPC to provide the National Assembly’s approval to spend N690m.