Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Paid Stale Vouchers Without Revalidation, Skipped Tax Deductions

Secrets Reporters

The Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Bauchi State, processed ₦4,310,235.00 in paid vouchers under the acting leadership of Dr. Dauda Abubakar Katagum without the revalidation that financial regulations require once a voucher has been outstanding beyond the prescribed window, this is revealed by SecretsReporters show.

Paragraph 611 of the Financial Regulations 2009 requires that any voucher left outstanding beyond the set period be revalidated before payment. That step was skipped. The result is that public money was released against vouchers whose validity had lapsed.

The revalidation requirement is not a formality. A voucher that has sat outstanding for too long may no longer reflect a genuine or current obligation. Prices change, services are delivered or abandoned, and the officer who originally approved the payment may have moved on. Revalidation forces the institution to confirm, before money leaves its account, that the payment is still justified. When that check is skipped, the voucher effectively becomes a blank cheque processed on the strength of an approval that may no longer mean anything.

The document reviewed also revealed that ₦1,830,265.82 in stamp duty went undeducted, and a further ₦1,234,637.00 in other statutory taxes were similarly not deducted.

These are not optional withholdings. Stamp duty and other statutory taxes are required by law to be deducted at source and remitted to the relevant authorities. When they are not deducted, the government loses revenue it is owed, and the transactions involved go unrecorded for tax purposes. In both cases, the failure runs in the same direction: money that should have reached the public treasury did not.

Dr. Dauda Abubakar Katagum served as Acting Chief Medical Director of the Centre during the period covered by the audit. He was confirmed as substantive Chief Medical Director by President Bola Tinubu, effective 6 December 2024.

Paragraphs 3106 and 3115 of the Financial Regulations 2009, covering irregular payment and poor cash management, apply across the three findings.

The Medical Director is directed to account for each sum before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee, recover and remit the amounts to the Treasury, and forward evidence of that remittance.

The three findings together total ₦7,375,137.82 for the 2022 financial year.