Senators in session
Jan. 13, 2025
The Senate has expressed concern over low remittances of revenues generated in 2024 by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and some government-owned enterprises (GOEs) to the Federation Account.
Sen. Sani Musa, Chairman, Joint Finance Committee of Senate and House of Representatives, stated this in Abuja on Monday at an interactive session on the MDAs’ revenue projections for 2025.
The MDAs at the meeting included: Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Others were: Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) and Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC).
Sani said that the senate was deeply worried about the widening disparity between the substantial revenues accruable to the MDAs and their consistently low remittances to the federation account.
“This trend undermines the government’s capacity to fund critical infrastructure and social services, calling to question issues of inefficiency, mismanagement and possible revenue leakages,” he said.
According to him, his committee’s mandate is to ensure transparency, accountability and efficiency in the financial operations of the agencies.
The senator said that the committee would continue to scrutinise the MDAs’ revenue projections, performance and adherence to statutory remittance obligations.
This, he said, was to identify systematic doubts and recommend actionable results to reverse the troubling patterns.
Sani sought the cooperation and understanding of all stakeholders at the interactive session, saying that it was imperative that accurate data, comprehensive records and open data were presented for the benefit of Nigerians.
“I call on all of us to please be very open on all those areas that we know, even if they are not presented to us,” he said. (NAN)
