The National Assembly on Monday lamented the poor remittances of revenues generated in 2024 by ministries, departments and agencies of the federal government (MDAs) and some government-owned enterprises (GOEs) to the Federation Account.
The Chairman, Joint Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Finance, Senator Sani Musa, expressed the concern at an interactive session on the MDAs’ revenue projections for 2025.
The federal agencies and ministries whose accounting officers and Chief executive officers attended the meeting were the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
They also included the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), and the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC).
Sani said the National Assembly was not satisfied with the widening disparity between the substantial revenue accruals to the MDAs and their consistently low remittances to the federation account.
He added, “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.”
The Committee Chairman explained that his committee’s mandate was to ensure transparency, accountability and efficiency in the financial operations of the agencies.
He said the committee would continue to scrutinise 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.
Musa sought the cooperation and understanding of all stakeholders at the interactive session.
He said it was imperative that accurate data, comprehensive records and open data were presented for the benefit of Nigerians.
He added, “Let us approach these tasks with a shared commitment to building a stronger, more accountable fiscal framework for Nigeria.
“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 therefore directed all heads of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to appear in person for the defence of their 2025 budget proposals, instead of merely submitting documents.
He said the exercise was important to fulfill the constitutional mandate of the National Assembly and to ensure accountability.
He added, “This hearing is a critical step in addressing the fiscal challenges confronting the nation.
“We are committed to ensuring transparency, accountability, and efficiency in the financial operations of government enterprises.
“The goal is to scrutinise budget projections, assess agency performance, and identify gaps in adherence to statutory remittance obligations, while proposing actionable reforms to address troubling trends.”
However, during the budget defence, a member of the committee, Senator Adams Oshiomhole (APC/Edo North), queried the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) over its spending in 2024.
Oshiomhole asked JAMB registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, to justify the N850 million spent on security, cleaning and fumigation last year.
He said: “You spent N1.1 billion on meals and refreshments. Are you being freely fed by the government? What this means is that you are spending the money you generate from poor students, many of them orphans.
“You also spent N850 million on security, cleaning and fumigation in 2024. What did you fumigate? Is it mosquitoes that took all this money?”
Oshiomhole further condemned JAMB for spending N600 million on local travels
Oloyede had earlier disclosed that JAMB remitted N4 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund in 2024 while it received a grant of N6 billion from the Federal Government.
Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Abiodun Faleke, wondered why JAMB, a revenue-generating and self-sustaining agency, should rely on federal allocations.
Faleke said, “You remitted N4 billion and got N6 billion from the federal government. Why not keep the N4 billion and we stop the government from funding JAMB?”
He then threatened that the National Assembly might remove JAMB’s allocation in subsequent budgets unless convincing justifications for its continued reliance on government funding were provided.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly Joint Committee on Finance has queried the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) for not remitting the sum of N8 billion it generated in 2024.
This followed the presentation by the Deputy Corps Marshal, representing the Corps Marshal, Shehu Mohammed, who said though they had a target of N10 billion, they generated N13 billion.
The joint committee is co-chaired by Musa and Hon. James Faleke made this known during an investigative hearing held on Monday in Abuja.
“You had a target of 10 billion but generated N13 billion, but only remitted N5 billion. So you just bring the balance. You need to furnish this committee with details of the unremitted fund,” Sani directed.
Also, the joint committee threatened to stop the federal government’s grant to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board in the 2025 budget proposal.
The committee also constituted a special committee to probe a shortfall of over N4 trillion revenue due to indiscriminate waivers by agencies of government.
The decision to set up a panel to probe the shortfall followed a motion moved by Senator Adamu Aliero during the hearing to probe the revenue profiles of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) and Government-Owned Enterprises (GOEs) ahead of the 2025 budget.
Moving the motion, Aliero said, “Due to the issue of waiver, there is a serious shortfall between what is supposed to be collected as revenue and what is actually collected.
“From our record, over N5.9 trillion was supposed to be the consolidated revenue fund of the federation. But we only have N1.9 trillion. We need to set up a special committee that will investigate this serious anomaly.
“We cannot continue to allow revenue agencies to be spending money without the National Assembly. If someone is given a waiver, we have to find out who gave that waiver.
“A shortfall of over N4 trillion is not a small amount. We found out that over N 4.9 trillion has not been remitted. We should set up an investigative committee that would investigate all the money that has not been remitted,” he said.
He noted that the Committee was aware that a lot of GOEs collect revenues from other sources and they never disclose them.
His words: “Some of them did even disclose to the budget office. We’ve been able to get all those and we have all done our own scrutinisation and we believe that GOEs and heads of departments that are here will be able to open up to give us more details of how these revenues are sourced. We have also looked at their expenditures. You can imagine an agency collecting revenue whereby it is expected that sales is self-funded.
“Funds that are supposed to be remitted to the consolidated revenue fund and it’s never done. I think from now on we are going to block that leakage and we will do the needful.
“We will scrutinise the expenditures of these GOEs because a GOE will collect 100 percent revenue and in its expenditure, you see that it’s spending about 95 percent of that revenue it collected. So this is the avenue at which we are able to find a lasting solution to those leakages.”