NNPC, NPA, Others To Face Senate Panel This Week Over Unremitted N2tn

The Senate Committee on Finance has sent out invitations to heads of 60 government-owned firms to start appearing before it from this week.

They are to explain their failure to remit various funds running into about N2tn to the Consolidated Revenue Fund account of the Federal Government.

Investigations by our correspondent revealed that the secretariat of the committee had dispatched letters of invitations to the affected agencies, which contain dates they are expected to appear.

Some of the 60 government-owned firms already summoned, according to a list obtained from the panel’s secretariat, are the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, the Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Administration Agency.

Others are the Corporate Affairs Commission, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Federal Housing Authority, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board and the National Pension Commission.

They also included the Nigeria Ports Authority, National Lottery Trust Fund, National Sugar Development Council, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, Nigerian Communication Commission, and the Nigerian Shippers Council, among others.

The Chairman of the Senate panel, Solomon Adeola, said the probe was important so that the government would raise enough money to fund the budget.

He said the full-scale investigative hearing would also enable the National Assembly to identify various leakages of government revenue which had been leading to a yearly budget deficit.

Adeola said, “We are probing the remittances of the one per cent stamp duties by the MDAs to the Federal Inland Revenue Service. To a large extent, there are some mind boggling revelations that we have seen and are quite disturbing.