Senate Grills Customs Over N62bn Under Remittance

An investigation into the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) under-remission of N62 billion in revenue has been started by the Senate Public Account Committee.

Naija News reports that the committee led by Senator Ahmed Wadada is vetting the 2017 Auditor General Report, which exposed the under-remittance.

The query alleged that “In the report of NCS summary of the monthly collection 2017 total collection for the federation account were N691bn.

“However, the receipt of NCS collection and remittance into Federation Account 2017 showed actual remittance into the account with the CBN for the year under review to be N629bn. A comparison of these two documents revealed an under remittance N62bn.

“There was no footnote or any form of additional information attached to the two reports.showing the reasons for the discrepancies neither there was any form of communication of the management on the intention for the future reconciliation or remittance The above anomalies could be attributed to weaknesses in the internal control system at Nigeria Customs Service Headquarters Abuja.”

The committee chairman consequently instructed Customs to present their defense of the underremittance charge within a fortnight.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Port Authority has been summoned to appear before the Senate over a $852 million debt owed by operators.