Lagos Assembly begins audit of 57 local councils

The Lagos House of Assembly has commenced an audit of all the 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) and the 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the state.

The Chairman of House Committee on Public Account (Local), Mojeed Fatai, disclosed this in a statement on Saturday in Lagos.

Fatai said the committee was expected to submit its report to the House after the weeklong exercise.

He stressed that the exercise was aimed at ensuring probity and accountability in the local government administration as provided in the 1999 Constitution.

The lawmaker said: “The essence of the exercise is to allow the committee go through the 2019 report of the Auditor-General without fear or favour to any local council indicted by the officials of the Auditor- General’s office.

“Also, the committee has the power to summon any person to give evidence at any place or produce any document or other things in his possession or under his control.”

Fatai noted that letters had been sent to all the 20 LGAs and 37 LCDAs and are expected to come with copies of the approved budget for 2017 and 2020 as well as an analysis of payment made to non-pensionable staff from 2017 to 2019.

The lawmaker added that the local councils are also expected to provide analysis of recurrent expenditure from June to December 2017 to 2020, bank statements of accounts as at December 31, 2018 and all outstanding queries in 2019 statutory report.

“Officials expected at the audit exercise are the chairmen of each local government, the vice chairmen, leader of the council, executive committee members, council managers, council treasurers, and head of departments,” he added.