Reps Finance C’ttee Frowns At Remittances, Expenditure In Energy Commission

Energy Commission of Nigeria

Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Tuesday frowned at the expenditures carried out by the Energy Commission of Nigeria.

At its hearing on the 2023- 2025 Medium Term Expenditure Framework in Abuja, the committee scowled at the discrepancy between records of remittances of the commission and that of the Account General of the Federation (OAGF).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that records earlier submitted by the commission showed that it remitted N13.63 million in 2021 while that of the OAGF showed N27 million.

Rep. Stanley Olajide (APC- Oyo) a member of the committee said that a status inquiry should be carried out in both agencies to determine the correct figure.

 “I think with this discrepancy we are looking at right here, a status inquiry is required; because for this to be going on, I mean we are talking about tax payers money.

“How can we have a process when money is sitting in CBN account and we do not know what agency will be created for it, I think it is absurd, we need to go deep to find out what is going on here.

“Secondly Mr Chairman, looking at their submission, every year all these agencies come here and it is just about coming for a piece of the pie, we are loaning money to fund all these budgets.

“Two billion in grants received and you are talking about 1 per cent return on investment, director in finance, who does that?

“Let’s just look at 2021, N2.4 billion received and look at the kind of remittance you are talking about N13 million and we are talking about running a nation.

“There is a committee talking about merging all these agencies, if their agency refuse to perform they way we need to, maybe it’s time for us to collapse it into something else, return on investment matters now with what we are going through in Nigeria,’’ he said.

Also, Rep. John Dyeh (PDP-Benue) demanded that the commission should furnish the committee with details of all the expenditures made by the commission between 2020 and 2021.

“Recurrent grants received, N2.4 billion in 2021, IGR N13 million, operating expenses N2.46 billion, I mean we must have details of the expenditure; your received N2.4 (billion) and you expended everything, we must see the details, Nigerians must see these details.

“In the same 2021, counter grants, N5.7, Capital Expenditure, N6.9, we must see the details, we must see the details Chairman, we must see the details.

“In 2020, the same story, recurrent grant received N2.2, IGR N14 million, operating expenses, N2.26, haba, haba, director finance, we must see the details, we must see the details,’’ he said.

Earlier, the Director of Finance in the commission, Mr Clestus Nna told the committee that the commission had receipts for funds remitted in the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF)

“For 2021, we have the treasury receipt to back our 100 per cent remittance to the CFR.

“Our record is N13 million, we have tender fees, we generated N12 million from tender fees, we have options, we generated N553 thousand and we refunds which is N183 million (thousand). The total is N13, 627, 000,’’ he said.

Also, the Deputy Director, Revenue and Investment in the OAG, Mr Ambrose Umayi said that the Energy Commission remitted N27.82 million in 2021 and that no payment had been made in 2022.

He, however, blamed the discrepancy on the workings of Treasury Singule Account (TSA) domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) saying that it is difficult to determine which agency had remitted funds into the account

“Sometimes when these agencies pay their money into the TSA, it is an account that is domiciled in the CBN, we now issue receipts when they apply and let us know that they have paid and kindly be issued a receipt.

“The reason why is because when we look at our bank statement with the CBN, we just see bulk credit, we do not know which agency owns which payment, and unfortunately that is the truth of the matter.

“So we usually have to wait, that is why sometimes there is a delay between when they pay and the point where receipts are issued.

“And the reason why is because we have to go to the remita platform to unbundle which agency has made payment and we usually use their evidence to track it, reconcile it and issue receipt.

“That is why sometimes there can be this kind of discrepancy,’’ he said.

In his ruling, the Deputy Chairman of the committee, Rep. Abdullahi Musa (APC-Niger) said that the committee will pay an oversight visit to OAG to critically look into the operations.

He said that OAG cannot be operating a manual system at this age and time saying that there was a need to change the mode of operations in the agency.

The chairman directed that a reconciliation be carried out between both agencies and adjourned the hearing to Monday, September 5. (NAN)
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