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The Federal Government has said it has blocked the leakage of N500billion across Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, through the Presidential Initiative for Continuous Audit (PICA).
        The Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Ministry of Finance, Dr. Mohammed Dikwa, disclosed this on Wednesday when the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) alumni visited him. According to him, if the PICA initiative was not in place, the N500bn saved by the government would have been spent by MDAs. He said: If you recall, over the last four years, this administration has put in place a lot of policies on ground and I am part of the financial policies put in place by the Ministry of Finance. One of the fundamental achievements was saving the government over N500bn from leakages and wastages under my leadership at PICA. If the initiative was not in place, this amount of money we are talking about would have been spent by MDAs. It was because of this initiative that was put in place that we were able to save that money from treasury looters.
        According to Dikwa, the primary focus of PICA was to put internal control systems in place to check unnecessary spending of government revenue. We have also put in place so many other measures like the Whistle-blowing Policy. When we came up with the policy, an average of 11, 000 tips were received on a monthly basis, but now, we hardly receive 20 to 30 tips simply because people have reduced the wrong doing in government.