Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — The House of Representatives has accused Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Port Authority, NPA, and other Federal Government’s ministries, departments and agencies of flouting Treasury Single Account, TSA, guidelines.
The House said non-compliance with the guidelines have led to the loss of over $900m by the government.
The lawmakers while adopting the report by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Need to Ascertain the Proceeds of the TSA to Enhance Transparency, Accountability and Good Governance, indicted the Nigerian Ports Authority, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, ministries and banks of various infractions.
All the 20 recommendations by the panel were unanimously approved by the House, including that the Ministry of Finance, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Central Bank of Nigeria should intensify efforts to enforce full implementation and compliance with the TSA policy by all the MDAs.
While asking that the MDAs who had violated the TSA policy be sanctioned accordingly, the lawmakers ordered that the Ministry of Finance and OAGF “should be directed to publish, sanction/prosecute with immediate effect all MDAs, private persons, private organisations as well as banks, where FGN funds are hidden based on the discoveries made in the report of the consultants engaged by the OAGF and review the compliance with the TSA.”
They said applications for exemptions/waivers must follow the guidelines on TSA implementation and duly approved and signed by the President only.
In its indictment of NPA, Committee said that investigations revealed a whopping sum of $569,162,083.80 as Intels’ outstanding obligation to the authority.
“On the other hand, Intels’ submitted to the ad hoc committee in 2017 an outstanding obligation to the NPA as $862.2m. The difference from the two submissions might have been after Intels have made an additional payment to the NPA after the NPA submission to the committee,” the report read.
They said “the issues bordering on the Nigerian Ports Authority fund totaling €6,626,429.59 seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission should be resolved immediately and the funds released to the appropriate owner. The EFCC should be informed in writing to immediately refund the same amount into the TSA account with the CBN.”
The lawmakers said the documents submitted by the OAGF and the CBN showed that between January and September 2016, the FIRS collected N32, 689,825,757.91 while Customs collected N975, 923,050.49.
