The Senate Committee on Finance has summoned the Auditor General for the Federation, Mr. Adolphus Aghughu, to appear before it next week Tuesday.
The AuGF is expected to explain to the panel, reasons his office had not given guidelines for the auditing of the accounts of the Nigeria Immigration Service since 2017 despite repeated letters from the NIS requesting the guidelines.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee Senator Solomon Adeola, gave the directive when the Controller General of Immigration, Mr. Mohammed Babandede appeared before the panel on Thursday.
The committee is currently investigation the alleged poor remittances of internally generated revenues and the 1 per cent Stamp Duty on all contracts by the ministries, agencies and departments of the Federal Government into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
The Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Mr. Victor Muruako, had told to the committee that his agency had not received the audited accounts of NIS since 2017.
He said the action was contrary to the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 among other infractions.
In his response, Babandede stated that there have been no guidelines from Auditor General’s Office despite repeated official requests from the NIS.
He added that the Minister of Interior had, however, launched a probe into the unaudited accounts of the NIS.
The Immigration boss further disclosed that the revenue generating operations of the agency is under a public -private partnership arrangement.
Babandede said he inherited a sharing formular agreement that cannot be readily renegotiated or cancelled in the foreseeable future.
He said the development had left the agency to remit only about 20 per cent of revenues generated to the Federal Government.
Adeola therefore directed the Immigration boss to furnish the committee with a comprehensive account of its revenue and the sharing in specific terms as well as details of the partners in the PPP deal.
The Senator said the committee intended to interact with the partners in presence of the Immigration.
He said, “There is the need to seriously interrogate the PPP arrangement and its duration as it seems to be an unending denial of needed revenue for Nigeria.
“A situation where partners collect 70 per cent, leaving Immigration and Federal Government to share 30 per cent over unending period of time, is looking more like a ‘pick pocket partnership’ arrangement for Nigeria that should be remedied,” he stated.
The chairman said with the experience of Nigeria on the PPP arrangement concerning the issue of passport and other immigration documents, there was the need for the National Assembly to come up with legislation to guide and regulate such partnerships as the present ad hoc system was shortchanging the Federal Government
