By Paul Effiong
House of Representatives Committee on Finance yesterday grilled the registrar-general of the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, and other heads of government agencies over low revenue remittance to the federal government, even as they requested documents relating to the number of registered companies in the country.
Chairman of the House committee, James Faleke made the request yesterday during the Committee Revenue Monitoring session held at the National Assembly in Abuja.
The panel lamented that the federal government is facing difficulties funding its annual budgets for the federation whereas many government agencies rake in billions of naira from their internally generated revenue.
The committee urged the CAC registrar-general and other heads of agencies to provide the committee with the necessary documents relating to the number of registered companies operating in Nigeria and the remittance of revenue into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federal government.
Responding to questions, the Registrar-General, Husaini Magaji said the agency does not have the accurate figure of all the registered companies, as some documents relating to these entities had been removed from their files
He explained that the commission had been consistently paying its unternally generated revenue to the consolidated revenue fund of the federal government
He stated that the major revenue sources include business registration, incorporated trustees, mortgages, reservation of name, annual income filling and accreditation fees adding that they had remitted N23,628,725.000.00
Also, a member of the panel, Stanley Olajide said it is unacceptable that the agency does not have accurate record of all registered companies in the country.
Meanwhile, Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Olubumni Kuku informed that there was a fire incident in the agency that affected certain documents demanded by the committee.
She apologised to the committee that the agency does not have the requested documents handy and demanded more time to present them as requested.
Faleke therefore ruled that the CAC registrar-general and other heads of agencies re-appear with the requested documents detailing their income, as well as bank statement of accounts from 2023 till date and come back on March 10.
