By Deji Elumoye
The Senate has summoned the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Aghughu Arhotomhenia, over the non-audit of the financial records of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) in the last five years.
Arhotomgenia is to appear before the Senate Committee on Finance next Tuesday to give reasons why he refused to give guidelines for the auditing of the accounts of the NIS since 2017 despite several reminder letters from the NIS to this effect.
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, gave the directive yesterday when the Controller General of Immigration, Mr. Mohammed Babandede, appeared before the committee investigating the remittances of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and one per cent stamp duty on all contracts by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
In the course of the investigative hearing, the Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Mr. Victor Muruako, disclosed that his agency had not received the audited accounts of the NIS since 2017 contrary to the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 among other infractions.
Responding, Babandede explained that there have been no guidelines from Auditor General’s Office despite repeated official requests from the NIS.
He further disclosed that the revenue generating operations of the agency is under a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement that he inherited with a sharing formula agreement that cannot be readily renegotiated or cancelled in the foreseeable future leaving the agency to remit only about 20 % of revenue generated to the federal government.
