Austin Njoku, the spokesperson for the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS), has blamed Open Treasury Portal for the omission of payment details in the transactions recently conducted by the organisation.
Njoku made the assertion in response to an earlier story by SaharaReporters which showed that the prison service was one of the 32 agencies that had failed to describe the details of about N9 billion transactions on the Open Treasury portal maintained by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF).
The Civic Media Lab had discovered at least 213 transactions in the portal between April and May that did not contain any descriptions of what the payments were meant for.
The data showed that the prison service made 41 payments to 36 companies without stating the purpose of payment.
Njoku, however, said the service has high accounting standards and should not be blamed for the omission. 
“The disbursement issue is from the portal. It is not our fault,” he said. “Sometimes, we make transactions, and it does not reflect. I think the treasury has something to say about that.
“We are very diligent about our accounting processes; the ICPC – Independent Corrupt Practices Commission gave us a very high credit on our transactions.”
The Accountant General’s office has not responded to a request for comment as of press time.
