WorldStage Newsonline– Nigeria’s Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) has advocated stronger collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to ensure recovery of unremitted revenues to the appropriate government coffers.
The Chairman of RMAFC, Mr Muhammad Shehu, made the call when he paid a courtesy visit to the Chairman of EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede, in Abuja on Wednesday.
Shehu said that the collaboration would help to discover the areas of revenue leakages and ensure its recovered effectively.
“We are calling on EFCC for more collaboration, not only in the area of enforcement but also intelligence gathering and data sharing with respect to government revenue from any source.
“The collaboration with your organisation in the area of enforcement served as an impetus to the success recorded in our recovery exercise.
“It is therefore important to bring to the fore that the collaboration between RMAFC and EFCC is crucial in addressing the challenges of unremitted revenue to the Federation Account,’’ he said.
Shehu also sought the assistance of the EFCC in respect of capacity building for the staff of RMAFC, especially in the area of forensic investigation.
He said that his organisation had observed that many Revenue Generating Agencies described as Government Owned Enterprises (GOE) by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation are allowed to generate revenue.
He added that “such agencies also spend from it and remit the balance as operating surplus to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
“This is not known to the constitution as all agencies are constitutionally mandated to remit the revenues generated in gross to the Federation Account as prescribed in section 162 (1) of the 1999 constitution as amended.
“The constitution states that the Federation shall maintain a special account to be called, The Federation Account into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation.
“Except the proceeds from the personal income tax of the Personnel of the Armed Forces of the Federation, the Nigeria Police Force, the Ministry or Department of Government charged with responsibility for Foreign Affairs and the residents of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.’’
The chairman said that the collaboration between RMAFC and EFCC in 2013 helped the commission to recovered unremitted and under-remitted revenues.
He said that the revenues were collected and deducted from the third party by the banks to the Federation Account covering a period of 2008 to 2015, where N74 billion was recovered.
He also disclosed that in 2021, the RMAFC engaged another set of consultants in synergy with EFCC and expanded the scope of recovery to include the public sector and oil and gas sector for a period covering 2016 to 2019.
“The exercise has so far recovered over N216 Billion to the appropriate government coffers and it is still going on”.
He said that the RMAFC was established to ensure effective and efficient management of the nation’s revenue.
In his remarks, Olukoyede embraced the RMAFC visit, stressing that there was a need for effective collaboration between the two organisations to ensure proper management of government revenue.
“Nigeria can only move forward, when there is transparency and accountability in the conduct of government business.
“Nigeria will be better if the right steps are taken. There are things we have been able to do together within the scopes of our mandate and your mandate as well.
“Transparency and accountability should be embedded in our public life as a nation. That’s the only way we can move forward.”
According to him, one of the things the two agencies are supposed to focus on more now besides recoveries is our systems.
“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with us as Nigerians but with the system that we run here, if you bring in the people that make things work in their own countries to our system here, they will be corrupt.
“There is an entrenched system here that encourages people to steal and it will appear as if nothing will happen. Let’s look at our system of revenue generation, the system that allows leakages in mobilisation and appropriation of funds.
“If we don’t look at the system, we will continue to chase shadows. Let’s get our priorities right. I see no reason why a ministry that has no business with project execution will be awarding contracts.
“We should look at these areas and scale up our surveillance. In all of these let’s support the President in all his efforts to reposition this country.
“The president relies on you and me and all the people he has put in a position of trust and responsibility,” he said.
