THE National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance on Monday set up a special panel to investigate a shortfall of over N4 trillion revenue due to indiscriminate waivers by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government.
This was just as the joint committee, co-chaired by Senator Sani Musa and Honourable James Faleke, held a hearing to probe the revenue profiles of MDAs and Government-Owned Enterprises (GOEs) ahead of the 2025 budget.
This followed the adoption of a motion moved by Senator Adamu Aliero in order to enable the Senate and House of Representatives committees to develop accurate and realistic revenue projections for 2025.
While moving the motion, Senator Aliero said: “Due to the issue of waiver, there is a serious shortfall between what is supposed to be collected as revenue and what is actually collected.
“From our record, over N5.9 trillion was supposed to be the consolidated revenue fund of the federation. But we only have N1.9 trillion. We need to set up a special committee that will investigate this serious anomaly.
“We cannot continue to be allowing revenue agencies to be spending money without the National Assembly. If someone is given a waiver, we have to find out who gave that waiver. A shortfall of over N4 trillion is not a small amount. We found out that over N 4.9 trillion has not been remitted. We should set up an investigative committee that would investigate all the money that has not been remitted,”
On his own, the co-chairman, Senator Musa, said the committee was aware that a lot of GOEs collect revenues from other sources and they never disclose them.
According to him,, “Some of them did even disclose to the budget office. We’ve been able to get all those and we have all done our own scrutinisation and we believe that GOEs and heads of departments that are here will be able to open up to give us more details of how these revenues are sourced. We have also looked at their expenditures. You can imagine an agency collecting revenue whereby it is expected that sales is self-funded.
“Funds that are supposed to be remitted to the consolidated revenue fund and it’s never done. I think from now on we are going to block that leakage and we will do the needful. We will scrutinize the expenditures of these GOEs because a GOE will collect 100% revenue and in its expenditure, you see that it’s spending about 95% of that revenue it collected. So this is the avenue at which we are able to find a lasting solution to those leakages.”
The Lawmaker stated that the President, while presenting the 2025 appropriation bill before the National Assembly, mentioned the importance of heads of agencies to appear before the National Assembly to defend their budgets.
He pointed out that the MDAs should not be surprised to see that zero allocation is made to them if they are unable to present themselves and defend what they have presented to the budget office.
The committee also queried the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) for not remitting N8 billion it generated in 2024.
This followed the presentation by the Deputy Corps Marshal, representing the Corps Marshal, Shehu Mohammed, who said though they had a target of N10 billion, they generated N13 billion.
But the committee queried the FRSC for remitting only N5 billion of the amount.
“You had a target of N10 billion but generated N13 billion but only remitted N5 billion. So you just bring the balance. You need to furnish this committee with details of the unremitted fund,” Senator Sani directed.
Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, said that the 2024 budget was the first full-year budget of the present administration.
He stated that the lessons learned from 2024 formed the basis of the assumptions in the 2025 budget which was designed to generate more revenue for the government and provide solutions for the economy.
He said GOEs must do better and urged all agencies of government to cooperate fully with the National Assembly.
Agencies that were invited included the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission, Nigeria Shippers’ Council, Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Nigeria Customs Service, Corporate Affairs Commission, Nigeria Communication Commission, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigerian Port Electricity Training, and Security and Exchange Commission.
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