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The Senate Public Accounts Committee, SPAC, on Tuesday vacated a N62.2 billion under-remittance query against the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, in the 2019 audit report by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, OAuGF.
The committee, in an investigative session with Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, also resolved to set up a small committee to reconcile the remaining 76 queries raised against the Service in the 2019 and 2020 audit reports.
The session focused on the first 77 queries on alleged financial infractions against Customs.
Representative of the Auditor-General, as directed by SPAC Chairman, Senator Ibrahim Dankwabo (Gombe North), read Query 1: That in 2017, while N691.242 billion was Customs’ total revenue collection, only N629.23 billion was remitted, leaving a balance of N62.2 billion allegedly unremitted into the Federation Account.
Responding, Adeniyi said the N62.2 billion classified as “unremitted” was wrongly arrived at due to misclassification of levies collected on behalf of other agencies.
“The under-remittance of N62.2 billion levelled against Customs in the 2019 audit report was wrongly arrived at through misclassification of levies collected¡.
“While most levies are to be collected and remitted into the Federation Account, others like those on local production of wheat, textiles and wines, etc, do not go into the Federation Account. The totality of these accounted for the alleged unremitted N62.2 billion,” the Customs boss explained.
The committee accepted the explanation and cleared Customs of the N62.2 billion query.
Adeniyi gave similar clarifications on Queries 2 and 3, which also satisfied the committee.
Reacting, Senator Babangida Hussaini, representing Jigawa North West, questioned why Customs allowed the queries to reach the investigative stage.
“I was in the civil service, just like the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Ibrahim Dankwabo, before venturing into politics. Queries 1, 2 and 3 that you have responded to, should have been trashed out at the reconciliation level with the auditors and not allowed to get to this stage,” Hussaini said.
Adeniyi, however, reminded the committee that the years under review were a period of frosty relations between the Senate and the Nigeria Customs Service.
On the strength of the Customs’ explanations, SPAC resolved to set up a small committee to meet with the Service for reconciliation of issues raised in the remaining 74 queries.
The committee said the reconciliation panel will fast-track resolution of the outstanding audit queries without further delay.
