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Sitting allowance exists for a specific reason: to compensate people who attend meetings they are not otherwise paid to attend. Full-time staff of an agency are already on the payroll. They are paid a salary for the work they do, meetings included.
That is why the payment of sitting allowance to full-time staff is not a great area. It is not permitted and it is certainly not permitted without a budgetary provision in the Appropriation Act, which is what Section 80(4) of the Constitution, Paragraph 417 of the Financial Regulations 2009, and Establishment Circular SWC/S/04/S.310/T/65 of 8 April 2016 all speak to.
The National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS), Kaduna, made five such payments, totalling ₦2,675,000.00, to full-time staff. There was no budgetary provision for the money in the Appropriation Act.
The review identifies two risk in that process which are: waste of public funds, and diversion of public funds.
The distinction matters. Waste is money spent without lawful basis. Diversion is money spent on people who were never meant to receive it in this case, staff whose salaries already cover the work that sitting allowance is designed to compensate for elsewhere. When the two combine, the result is public money leaving the treasury through a route that should not exist at all.
The National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS) management did not deny making the payments. Its response, recorded in the review was this: “The Board migrated from the Northern Nigeria Ministry of Education and Ahmadu Bello University to the Federal Ministry of Education and have taken care of the Board Members, including those staff that came from the University. This tradition has been stopped since 2018 with the guide and advice of the team of reviewers.”
There are two things to note here. The first is that management frames the payments as a “tradition” carried over from the Board’s previous institutional home. The second is that management says the practice stopped in 2018 the year before the reviewed period, and on the reviewers’ own advice.
Neither point addresses the ₦2,675,000.00 itself. A tradition is not a budgetary provision. And the fact that a practice was later discontinued does not make the payments already made lawful, or the money any less recoverable.
The Board is directed to account for and recover ₦2,675,000.00 and remit it to the Treasury. Failing that, sanctions under Paragraphs 3106, 3115 and 3129 of the Financial Regulations 2009 apply.
Source: …Secretsreporters