Udora Orizu
The Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) and Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) yesterday disagreed over allegation that the latter is yet to remit N5.1 billion into the Federation Account from 2016 to 2019.
FRC made the allegation in Abuja at the ongoing public hearing on 2022 to 2024 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
The official of the commission had said that there was no evidence that the FRSC remitted the money, adding that the non-remittance was gotten from audited financial report
Countering the allegation, Road Safety’s Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, noted that he was prepared to give evidence of the remittances, while urging the committee to give FRSC the requisite time to reconcile with the FRC.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. James Faleke, questioned the unnecessary expenditure embarked upon by the Road Safety.
He warns that the lawmakers will expunge unnecessary budgetary provision in order to shore up revenue for the country to forestall unnecessary borrowing.
Faleke said, “the biggest problem confronting the country was revenue generation. We saw where agency is spending N3 billion above its income; we saw where they spend money not budgeted for.” Also a member of the committee, Hon. Sada Soli queried FRSC spending of N152 million on postages between 2019 and 2020 .
Soli further requested for explanation on the N70 million budgetary provision for acquisition of software, adding that it was uncalled for.
Responding, Oyeyemi noted that there had been no budgetary provision for the production of number plates since inception of the scheme.
According to him, some of the machines to produce number plates were funded from the proceeds of operating surpluses.
He added that the agency spends over a N100 million yearly on services rendered by Galaxy Backbone for the 24 applications.
Meanwhile the lawmakers walked out the Pipeline Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) for allegedly doctoring figures on its daily output of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) and other petroleum products in the country.
Chairman of the Committee, Faleke, asked the agency to reappear on Thursday to give further clarification on the discrepancies noticed in their documents as the PPPRA Assistant General Manager (AGM), Corporate Services, Kimshi Apollo could not give clear answers to some of the questions asked by the lawmakers.
He directed PPPRA to produce the records of all the daily output of petroleum products as well as the revenue remittances to the federal government unfailingly.
He also demanded from the Financial Reporting Council, the Accountant General Office as well as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to scrutinize the records and reappear.
