The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun,
on Wednesday, said the Nigerian Maritime
Administration and Safety Agency had not
been remitting the revenues generated to the
government’s coffers.
The immediate past Director-General of
NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolkemi, is currently
facing 40 counts of fraud and money
laundering to the tune of N34.5bn.
Adeosun specifically stated that in some
instances, NIMASA collected revenue in dollars
but paid naira into the government’s account.
The minister said this while addressing
journalists after the first Federal Executive
Council meeting of the year inside the
Presidential Villa, Abuja.
She explained that the requirement was that
such money should go to the Central Bank of
Nigeria which would convert the money to
naira.
Adeosun said while the government had
stopped NIMASA from doing so, an audit was
being carried out to identify other agencies.
This, she explained, was why the government
was doing a full audit of all those accounts
and to ensure that all those revenues were
converted in accordance with the extant
procedures and guidelines.
The minister added that it was also discovered
that some of the agencies spent government
money without control.
When asked what would be the fate of the
heads of the MDAs under whose purview
government funds were diverted in the past,
the minister said she would not want to pre-
empt the outcome of an audit that would be
commissioned by the government.
She, however, said that in a situation where it
is clear that financial procedures had been
breached, there was a process for dealing with
the culprits.
Adeosun said, “The principal discussion in our
meeting today was the initiative by this
administration to plug revenue leakages in our
MDAs that generate revenue. The presentation
to FEC was to remind ministers who supervise
these revenue-generating boards of their
responsibilities under the Fiscal Responsibility
Act.
“Let me remind you that under the FRA, these
boards and corporations who generate revenue
are supposed to generate and operate surplus,
80 per cent of which is to be credited to the
Consolidated Revenue Fund.
“But we have discovered that many agencies
have never credited anything and never
generated any operating surplus including
some whose salaries, overheads and capital
are paid by the Federal Government.
“In addition to that, they generate revenue
which they spend without any form of
control.”
Adeosun said one of the initiatives adopted by
the government was the directive to all the
agencies that they must all submit a budget
that must be subject to approval and they
must operate within that budget so that the
surplus that is meant to come to the Federal
Government could be seen to be used
appropriately.
Adeosun ruled out the possibility of any
ministry inflating its budget when there was
no revenue
She said, “There can be no inflation of budget
when revenues are so thin and one of the
things that I think that the budgeting process
is doing is pruning down unnecessary
expenditure.
“Let me also mention that we have set up the
efficiency unit that is going to look into how
we spend money and look at how we make
savings because the money just isn’t there.”
Adeosun said the Federal Government had
discovered that many revenue-generating
agencies had not been remitting the revenues
generated to the government’s coffers.
She explained that these are revenues of
government in non-oil economies but the
government had not been looking in the
direction of the MDAs in the past because the
country had a lot of oil money
She disclosed that a circular had been issued
to the agencies in their hundreds in December
2015 requesting that they send their budgets.
“What we discussed today (Wednesday) was
the responsibility of the ministers to ensure
that whether those agencies have boards or
not, those budgets are prepared and that the
Ministry of Finance is going to sit down with
the supervising ministers and the boards
concerned where necessary, to go through
their budgets and make sure that they are
reasonable and that the costs are not inflated.
“We also discussed that in some cases,
because some agencies have a track record
and history of making sure that every naira
they earned was spent, we will go in and audit
agencies under Section 107 ( of the
Financial Regulations.
“The Accountant-General, who is under the
Ministry of Finance, has the power to go in
and make inquiries about how public money is
spent, so we will be sending in auditors to
some agencies where we believe their cost is
simply excessive and not in tandem with our
expectations.
“The expected outcome of this is that the
Internally Generated Revenue which the new
budget is banking on will actually become a
reality. So, that was the principal discussion
and everybody in the cabinet endorsed the
initiative.” http://www.punchng.com/nimasa-collected-revenue-dollars-remitted-naira-fg/

Na wa

not for sale

Hmmm sm1 is soon gonna b sued for fraud

Jona is d dumbest we ve ever had,is he also goin to deny that he didnt no dis was goin on in NIMASA


Some slowpokes will still come around nd hail him,smh

buhari is a dulllard