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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Account, at the weekend, said it has recovered N521,765,134.17 un-remitted Value Added Tax (VAT) from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam, said the recovery demonstrates the effectiveness of legislative oversight in safeguarding public resources and ensuring accountability in the management of government’s revenue.
He noted that the Committee is committed to recovering all funds due to the Federal Government and blocking revenue leakages across public institutions.
The House recently adopted a motion calling for “investigation of revenue leakages through remita platform and non-compliance substantively with standard operating procedure and other allied service level agreement” and mandated the committee to undertake the exercise.
The committee noted that in the course of its investigation, it discovered that the CBN had failed to remit VAT amounting to N521,765,134.17, representing the tax component on fees earned from Remita transactions between November 2018 and April 2024.
Consequently, it directed the apex bank to remit the outstanding amount into the Federal Government Treasury and submit evidence of compliance.
The CBN, in a letter dated May 7, informed the Committee that it had complied with the directive and provided evidence showing that N521,765,134.17 had been remitted to the Federal Government.
Nonetheless, the panel noted that its engagement with the CBN was ongoing, particularly on the reconciliation and recovery of other outstanding liabilities.
These include un-refunded charges amounting to N954,302,576.67 and accrued interest of N2,329,027,728.92, bringing the total recoverable sum under that category to N3,283,330,305.59 for the period between March 1, 2015 and October 31, 2015.
Furthermore, the committee is pursuing the recovery of un-refunded Treasury Single Account (TSA) collections amounting to N8,993,551,555.94, with accrued interest of N20,727,241,152.04, bringing the total outstanding liability under that category to N29,720,792,707.98, among others.
