The senate committee on finance has revealed that no fewer than 60 federal government agencies failed to remit over N3 trillion generated revenue into the federation account from 2014 to 2020.
Chairman of the committee, Mr. Olamilekan Adeola disclosed this when the minister of finance, budget and national planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed; director-general of budget office, Mr. Ben Akabueze; auditor general of the federation, Mr. Idris Ahmed and other heads of agencies appeared before the committee over the ongoing investigation into revenue remittances by ministries, departments and agencies between 2014 and 2020
The lawmaker said over N3 trillion of generated revenue of the government was trapped with the MDAs.
He said the money might have been spent frivolously contrary to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the 2007 Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA).
Adeola said from the submissions already made and calculations from the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, about 60 government-owned enterprises may have about N3 trillion of government revenue still unremitted in their coffers.
“The reconciliation done so far by the office of accountant general of the federation is in excess of over a trillion naira going to like two, three trillion naira or thereabout and these monies are still hanging in the hands of these agencies and we have asked the office of the accountant general to get the money into the government coffers and we discovered that they are giving them a payment notice without necessarily following up this process.
“We have noticed that in the so-called 80 per cent of operational surplus the agencies refer to, many of these agencies proved frivolous expenditure and they have taken advantage of the current system and refuse to remit this amount as at when due.
“We tried to audit the account of these agencies year in year out for the past five years and some of the revelations are scaring. How do we explain that an agency of government that has a provision in the budget for capital, overhead and personnel in their audited account, they have gross revenue of N500 million and they are asking for N200 million?”
However, he said since the commencement of the investigations some agencies had complied with the committee’s directive with some of them paying back tens of millions of naira with receipts to show from the office of the accountant general of the federation.
“There is no gainsaying the fact that if these revenues are paid to the consolidated revenue fund for proper appropriation by the parliament during budget considerations, we are going to reduce dramatically the size of our deficit and hopefully, minimise our borrowing.
“We cannot continue to run government business as we used to do in this time when there are huge demands for government to fund needed infrastructure and other socio-economic programmes,” he added.
Adeola stressed that the minister and other top officials were invited to get their full buy-in and also brief them on the revelations unearthed by the committee’s investigations with many agencies committing all manner of illegalities relating to the expenditure of government funds that should rightly be paid into the consolidated revenue fund.
Meanwhile, Ahmed said some of the affected parastatals had started crediting government coffers with the outstanding revenues they generated in the last six years.
Of late, she said many agencies were directed to pay back revenues collected on behalf of federal government as required by the law.
Ahmed added that the executive arm of government is also scrutinising the application of the template of calculating and deducting operating surpluses by agencies of government to ensure that the right amount is paid to the government.
