The House Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has slammed the Nigeria Customs Service over the non-submission of audited financial statements.
The House of Representatives Public Account Committee has queried the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) over its failure to submit audited financial statements for the 2016, 2017, and 2018 financial years to the Auditor General of the federation.
At an investigative hearing on Tuesday, January 30, the committee criticised the NCS for withholding its financial statements for 2016, 2017, and 2018 financial year until 2021.
According to the chairman of the committee, Rep Bamidele Salam (PDP, Osun) the non-submission of audited financial statements for the 2016,2017 and 2018 financial years until 2021, which is at least three years late violates the country’s policy.
The Committee quizzed the “Under-remittance of revenue into the federation account for the year 2017 in sum of N62 billion, Discrepancies in Reported revenue figures, resulting in under-remittance of revenue of sum N63 billion, Under-disclosure of outstanding remittance for the year 2016 to the sum N10 million, Non-maintenance of bank statements and bank reconciliation statements, Non-maintenance of revenue collectors receipt.
And the Violation of the E-payment policy of the Federal Government of the sum of N2.5 million and Non-submission of audited financial statements for the 2016,2017 and 2018 financial years.
Responding to the queries, the Controller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale, said, the only Common External Tariff is remitted into the Federation account by the OAGF, while others that are active are remitted into the Non-Federation Account.
He confirmed that there was an overremittance of N1 bn into the federation account, which showed that there was no under-remittance of N62 billion.
He added that since the inception of the Treasury Single Account, Area commands do not maintain accounts with commercial banks, hence, all accounts closed and the revenue collected are remitted directly to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the statements are accessed at the customs headquarters through CBN’s Transaction Query System(TQS)
“Since the introduction of repayment in 2009, the maintenance of treasury Book 6A for revenue collections was stopped. Rather, the repayment receipts on the Nigeria Integrated Customs Information System platform have replaced the treasury books 6A.
“The service necessitates the fuelling of the vehicles for operational purposes which cut across the four zonal headquarters and area commands across the nation for control purposes.
“The service submitted copies of audited financial statements and management reports for the three (3) years under review”.
“Splitting of contracts to circumvent tenders procedures to sum of N38 million, Payment vouchers without preventing supporting documents to sum of N22 million and Unretired cash advances in the sum of N12 million” he noted.
In the end, the lawmakers unanimously resolved to allow the Customs boss to come for the defense of the above queries.
