The Senate and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday disagreed over the remittance of excess revenue to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) from its yearly N2.3 trillion budget.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Solomon Adeola, made the allegation during a public hearing on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework/Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) organised by the committee in Abuja.
He said major revenue generating agencies, such as the CBN and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), among others, have failed to remit their operating surpluses to the CRF over the years.
But the CBN denied the allegation, saying “it is 100 per cent not correct.”
The apex bank insisted that it has never defaulted in remitting 80 per cent of its annual revenue surpluses to the CRF under the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
While inviting the Director-General of the Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, to make his presentation, Adeola said: “I want you (DG Budget Office) to speak to the idea that in budgeting, some revenue-generating agencies spend their revenue hiding under the guise that what accrued to them is not enough for them to carry out their functions, and as such, they need to augment it with whatever they generate. Is that the position of the law?
“For every government agency that exists, it is expected that once you are coming to budget defence with your budget estimates, there should be a corresponding revenue estimate that you are contributing to the budget.
“Because in more than 30 per cent of the revenue-generating agencies, their idea is that budget is where you go to take and not where you contribute.
“From the preliminary investigation carried out by this committee, our findings are not palatable at all. A lot of heads of agencies have taken over the agencies as their personal property.
“They have decided to embark on a spending spree with nobody challenging them.
