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During the committee session, legislators pushed to find out under what legal framework Ogwel, as accounting officer operates to seek accountability of funds and hold inquiries over the operations of private federations.
National Council of Sports (NCS) has no legal framework that allows it to work with private federations when disbursing funds and seeking accountability, according to its Secretary General Dr. Bernard Ogwel.
Ogwel made the revelation while appearing before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday, as part of an audit into the accountability of funds.
During the committee session, legislators pushed to find out under what legal framework Ogwel, as accounting officer operates to seek accountability of funds and hold inquiries over the operations of private federations.
"I concede," Ogwel replied to the parliamentary committee, adding; “When the federations apply, we issue them a Certificate of Recognition which is gazetted.”
Ogwel revealed to the committee how NCS manages 51 federations in Uganda, varying from netball, athletes, boxing, football, and many others, and that he invokes the NCS Act’s instruments to compel these private federations to provide accountability for the funds they are provided.
“NCS has an internal audit function in line with the internal audit act. These audits form the basis of action.We have internal audit compliance of the council with respective federations.”
“When we issue funds, we give them instruments to show funding and what it is for, though the funds come in late," Ogwel said in response to how he handled private federations outside the legal framework.
PAC chairman Medard Sseggona wondered why Ogwel had not been jailed already, stating; "You have to be prayerful as I don't know why you have not been jailed. It is only because you triggered this inquiry to disburse funds."
The deputy chair of the committee, Asuman Basalirwa, urged Ogwel to be careful; "You may end up in jail. Everybody looks at you; do you have the legal clothing to interact with federations?”
“You must be careful because you are dealing with public resources. There must be accountability and you will be the focus," Basalirwa said during the committee session.
This audit comes after a Select Committee constituted to investigate the operations of the National Council of Sports (NCS) called for a forensic audit on the sports body in April.
A committee headed by Hon. Laura Kanushu recommended a forensic audit on NCS to establish the inconsistencies in the funds released to the sports federations in the first and second quarters of the Financial Year 2022/2023.
It was observed that the sports body did not remit the approved funds to the sports federations in line with the approved cash flow plan as required under Section 45 (4) of the Public Finance Management Act, 2015.
A case in point is Uganda Rugby Union that was reportedly supposed to receive Shs458 million in quarter one of Financial Year 2022/2023 but only received Shs224 million from NCS on July 27, 2022, according to the committee findings.
The committee cautioned the accounting officer of NCS against overstepping his legal mandate by suffocating budgets of sports federations.
The committee cautioned the accounting officer of NCS against overstepping his legal mandate by suffocating budgets of sports federations.
The committee also observed inconsistencies in the Non-Tax Revenue (NTR) and called upon the Auditor General to conduct a special audit to verify the exact NTR projections and collections by NCS for Financial Year 2022/2023.
Furthermore, of the disbursed money, the Committee found that NCS sent UGX 9.3 billion to 46 out of the 51 federations and associations between July and December last year.
The remaining UGX 6.0 was for the Commonwealth and Islamic Solidarity Games in Birmingham and Turkey, respectively, but NCS struggled to fully account for the games.
The committee found that NCS had inconsistencies in accountability and did not remit the approved funds to the sports federations in line with approved cash flow plan as required under Section 45 (4) of the Public Finance Management Act, 2015.
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