Audit Report: Senate Queries NBET Over N1.5bn Unremitted Fund
The Senate has queried the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company, NBET over alleged unremitted N1.5 billion as the total amount being accrued as accumulated interests from investments in Treasury Bills.
The Senator Matthew Urhoghide, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Edo South led Senate Committee on Public Accounts probe is sequel to a report of unremitted accounts by agencies of government which include NBET as submitted to it.
The Senate Committee is relying on the report presented to it for scrutinizing by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
This was raised Friday by Urhoghide when the Managing Director of the company, Dr Nnaemeka Ewelukwa appeared before the committee to defend the query raised by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation on the issue.
Although the Managing Director of the Company claimed that the then Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwella gave approval to the Company to invest in the treasury bill and spent the interest accrued from the investment in Treasury Bills.
Meanwhile, when the Senators looked into the approval letter by the Minister of Finance critically, it was discovered that the Minister had said that, “NBET is hereby granted authorization to utilize the interest earned and accruing on its investment in Treasury Bills to boost NBET’s Capitalization provided that the NBET does not utilize such monies for any recurrent expenditures.
The Minister had stated this in a letter dated March 6, 2015 in response to the request for the retention of the interest accruing on NBET’s investment in Nigerian Treasury Bills.
The query issued by the Auditor general read, ‘Various analysis carried out on the investment made by NBET, it was noticed that it stopped the remittance of accrued interest on the investment in Nigerian Treasury Bills as well as that on sitting balances on the Various accounts maintained by the company in April 2014. ” This was as a result of a letter written from the office of the cordinating Minister of the economy which was dated March 6, 2015, which purportedly gave NBET retroactive authorization to retain all interest from 2014. “The outstanding interest unremitted to consolidated revenue stands at N1. 5 billion.
The audit team observed the following issues with respect to retention on interest. In its response, NBET claimed that all interest earned on sitting balance were remitted to the CRF as the approval received did not cover this component, adding,
‘The interest earned from inception till December 2014 have all been remitted.”
But, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Urhoghide however tackled the Managing Director of NBET that only N529 million was remitted leaving about N986 million unremitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
The Chairman said it is glaring that the query raised by the Auditor General was valid asking the committee till next week Tuesday to defend the outstanding unremitted N986 million.
The query was raised by the Auditor General in 2015 up till the time of filing this report NBET was able to provide receipts of N529 million out of N1.5 billion unremitted interest from investment in the treasury bills.
