The office of the auditor general of the federation has disclosed that 15 ministries, departments, and agencies failed to remit N127.13 billion revenue to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) between 2017 and 2019.
The agencies are the Nigeria Customs Service headquarters, Abuja; Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research, Benin; Veterinary Council of Nigeria; Kwali Area Council, Abuja; Lagos University Teaching Hospital; National Orthopedic Hospital, Lagos; and the Federal Medical Centres in Keffi, Yenagoa and Ondo.
Others include the Nigeria Ports Authority, Council for Legal Education, National Industrial Court of Nigeria, Nigerian Immigration Service, and the Anambra-Imo River Basin Development Authority, Owerri.
The revelation is contained in its ‘2019 Annual Report on Non-Compliance, Internal Control, and Weakness Issues in MDAs of the Federal Government of Nigeria for the year ended December 31, 2019’ submitted to the national assembly.
According to the report, the finance circular issued on November 11, 2011, marked BO/RVE/12235/259/VII/201 requires all agencies to limit their utilisation of internally generated revenue to not more than 75 per cent of the gross revenue while the balance of not less than 25 per cent should be remitted to the CRF.
The sum of N127, 129, 212, 622.58 was the amount of revenues/internally generated revenues not remitted to relevant authorities by fifteen ministries, departments, and agencies,” said the auditor general.
According to the report, the NCS had the highest amount of unremitted revenue with N125.8 billion while the Anambra-Imo River Basin Development Authority, Owerri had the least amount of N5.3 million.
However, the report shows that the sum of N125.8 billion is the aggregate of remittance discrepancies discovered in the records of the NCS in 2017.
The first discrepancy, the report noted, was discovered upon examination of the NCS’s summary of monthly revenue collection in 2017 and the NCS’ collections and remittances into the federation account 2017.
“The audit observed that in the report of NCS’s summary of monthly revenue collection in 2017, total collections for the federation account were N691.26bn
“The report of NCS’s collections and remittances into the federation account in 2017 showed actual remittance into the federation account with the CBN for the year under review to be N629.23bn. A comparison of these two documents revealed an under remittance of N62.24bn”, the report stated.
The report added that there was no footnote or any form of additional information attached to the two reports indicating the reasons for the discrepancy, neither was any form of communication of management’s intention for future reconciliation or remittance.
Besides, the report found discrepancies in the reported revenue figures of the service in 2017, which led to the under-remittance of N63.6 billion to the federation account.
On both occasions, when contacted, the NCS failed to offer any explanation for the discrepancies found in their records, the report said.
The OAuGF therefore advised the comptroller general of the NCS to account for the unremitted sums, remit, and forward the evidence of remittance to the public accounts committees of the national assembly.
Otherwise, the head of customs is advised to “apply sanctions relating to failure to collect and account for government revenue as stated in paragraph 3112 of the Financial Regulations.”
The stated that other irregularities in the remittance of the IGR to the CRF found in the records of the remaining 14 agencies were discovered between 2018 and 2019.
