In news reports, the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF) has indicted the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) for non-remittance of billions of naira into the federation account. The audit report for the 2020 financial year submitted to the National Assembly in November last year, did not show how N328.71 billion collected as levies by the NCS between January 2016 and December 2020 was shared by the three tiers of government. The report said N151.121 billion deducted by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) on behalf of NUPRC (formerly Department of Petroleum Resources) as royalty for 2020 was not captured in the federation account. “The deductions by NNPC were purportedly for handling government priority projects, strategic holding costs, crude oil, and product losses among others.”
It said there was no evidence to show details of the priority projects and approval by FAAC, adding that the deductions were made before remittance to NUPRC. According to the report, the NCS remitted only CET levies during the period under review but failed to do the same for many other federal levies like rice levy,100 percent cigarette levy, 30 percent textile levy, 30 percent wine and spirit levy, 30 percent sanitary wares levy as well as wheat flour and grain levy. The OAuGF attributed the non-remittance to a poor internal control system at the NCS. It said the Heads of the Accounts Department of the Service and Federation Account Revenue Unit should have ensured complete remittance of the levies to the federation account. The OAuGF report which asked that the NCS Comptroller-General should be requested to explain why the levies were not remitted, accused the service of debiting the federation account with an unsubstantiated N13.91 billion not related to the FAAC remittances without any document. It alleged the NCS management operated a weak internal control system, improper record keeping, and poor follow-through process on records of the federation account revenue at CBN. However, the NCS management, in its response to the audit query, said the debit transaction in the federation account was a result of double entries of the CBN during their system upgrade. It added that its monthly reconciliation with CBN and OAGF reveals that the entries were correct. The report also claimed that the NCS did not remit N10.6 billion being part of the revenue collected from import duties, CET levies, and VAT between January 2016 and December 2020, and another N1.704b being part of federation account levies (other than CET levies) collected during the same period.
