Senate clears Customs of N62.2bn underremittance, says query “wrongly arrived”

The Senate Committee on Public Accounts (SPAC) has dismissed an audit query alleging that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) failed to remit N62.2 billion to the Federation Account, as contained in the Auditor-General’s 2019 report.

The decision was reached on Tuesday during an investigative hearing involving the leadership of the NCS, led by Bashir Adeniyi, the Comptroller-General.

The committee also announced plans to establish a joint reconciliation team to review and resolve 76 other audit observations raised against the agency in the 2019 and 2020 audit reports.

Proceedings began with the committee examining the first three audit queries. Representatives of the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation presented the issues before the panel, chaired by Senator Ibrahim Dankwabo.

According to the audit report, Customs generated N691.242 billion in revenue in 2017 but remitted only N629.23 billion to the Federation Account, leaving an alleged shortfall of N62.2 billion.

Responding to the allegation, Adeniyi explained that the figure was the result of a classification error involving statutory levies collected on behalf of other government agencies.

“The under remittance of N62.2 billion leveled against Customs in the 2019 audit report was wrongly arrived at through misclassification of levies collected.

“While most of the levies are to be collected and remitted into federation account, others like the ones on local production of wheat, textiles and wines etc, do not go into federation account, totality of which accounted for the alleged unremitted N62.2 billion,” he said.

The Comptroller-General offered similar clarifications on the second and third audit queries, prompting members of the committee to question why the issues had not been resolved earlier through administrative engagement with auditors.

Senator Babangida Hussaini noted that the matters appeared straightforward and should have been settled before reaching the committee stage.

“ I was in the civil service just like the Ibrahim Dankwabo, Chairman of the Committee, before venturing into politics.

“Queries one, two and three that you have responded to, supposed to have been trashed out at reconciliation level with the auditors and not allowed to get to this stage,” he said.

Adeniyi, however, suggested that the audit issues originated during a period when relations between the Senate and the Customs Service were strained, making effective engagement more difficult.

After considering the explanations provided, the committee cleared Customs of the N62.2 billion remittance allegation and agreed to constitute a smaller working group to meet with officials of the service and reconcile the remaining 76 audit queries.

The panel expressed confidence that many of the outstanding observations could be resolved through further documentation and verification exercises.