THE Bauchi State House of Assembly has rejected the nomination of Mr Ishaku Yankari as the state Auditor General on the ground that the executive breached the criteria for his appointment.
Speaker of the House, Rt Hon. Abubakar Y Suleiman, disclosed this during the plenary on Friday, shortly after the reports of the House Committee on Public Account in respect of the screening of the nominee was presented by the committee chairman, Hon. Mubarak Haruna (Jama’are Constituency).
Last week, the State Governor, Bala Mohammed, forwarded Yakari’s name to the House as a nominee for the Auditor-General of Bauchi State.
The chairman of the committee explained that after extensive deliberations, it invited the Civil Service Commission, being one of the major stakeholders in the appointment of the Auditor General, for a meeting.
He said since the Bauchi State Public Sector Audit and other Related Matters Law, 2021 entails the processes and procedures of appointing Auditor General, the committee members were furnished with a copy of same to study the relevant sections.
“Since the nominee is originally a Staff of State Audit, the committee requested the nominal roll so that the committee will observe whether the seniority has been taken into consideration prior to the nomination or otherwise,” Haruna said.
According to the report, stakeholders were contacted to express their understanding regarding the matter under reference and the Civil Service Commission was requested to provide relevant documents of the three (3) recommended candidates submitted to His Excellency.
The committee explained that the House had received a petition dated August 24, 2023 from one Munkaila Yakubu who claimed to be a current overseer of the office of the State Auditor General in which the petition posits that in the process of the nomination before the House, all relevant provisions were disregarded.
The petition reportedly faulted all the processes and procedures of the exercise.
The committee stated that its findings showed that the Office of the Head of Civil Service contravened the provisions of Section 8 of Public Sector the Audit Law 2021 in submitting the list of three (3) candidates to the Civil Service Commission for interview in which they interviewed only those three (3) persons submitted to them.
Haruna said, “Based on this action, the committee said that the action negated the provision of Section 8 (3) which stipulates that in recommending a person for appointment as Auditor General, the Civil Service Commission shall advertise the vacancy because the Civil Service Commission did not use either the website or any of the National Newspapers,” Haruna said.
“Also, seniority was not taken into cognizance despite the fact that the nominee was selected from the Staff of the Audit. Therefore the joint Committee of Public Account and Petitions agreed that the petition has merit.
“Constitutional responsibilities of this Hon. House is lawmaking the peace, order and good governance of this State in accordance with Section 4 Sub-Section 7 (a) the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As such, the beauty of any law enacted by any House of Assembly is the level of compliance it receives from the general public and governmental institutions.
“Mr, Speaker, the committee is robustly of the view that any law passed by this Assembly shall remain relevant and any attempt to relegate it must be resisted by the House so that our efforts would ot always be ending in fiasco.
“Against this backdrop, and having made the above observations and findings and also having acquainted all Honourable Members on the situation under reference, the Committee recommended that the process of screening exercise of the nominee be halted since the criteria of selecting him was not duly followed and that the nomination be jettisoned since the processes and procedures followed were not in accordance with the provisions of the State Public Sector Audit Law 2021.”
The House unanimously adopted the report after the Speaker put the prayers into voice vote.