Reps give SEC 21-day ultimatum to account for unremitted N45bn

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has issued a 21-day ultimatum to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) to reconcile the N45 billion unremitted operating surplus recorded from 2007 to 2021.

The Chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam, gave the directive during the committee’s public hearing on leakages of government revenue on Tuesday in Abuja.

The FRC dragged SEC before the committee for not responding to the report issued in 2022, where N45.013 computed liability of unremitted funds was recorded against the SEC.

A representative of FRC, Bello Aliyu, told the committee that SEC had not made any attempt to reconcile the figure contained in the report.

He stressed that the balance of any operating surplus should be paid into the consolidated revenue fund of the Federal Government within less than one month of the statutory deadline for publishing any corporation account.

Aliyu said: “We have written SEC on December 20, 2022, intimating the commission of our computed liability for the period 2007 to 2021 and the said liability amounted to N45,013,010,229 only.

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“Up till now, we have not received any response from them, so as far as we are concerned they have accepted the liability and that is what we have recorded against the commission.”

However, the Director-General of SEC, Lamido Yuguda, said the commission had reconciled its operating surplus with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF).

“I think if the FRC had actually done a little more work, they would have really seen from the OAGF all the efforts that we have made to reconcile the surplus figure from 2007 when FRC came into being,” he stated.

In his remark, the committee chairman said the FRC was empowered by law to ensure that all agencies and government corporations listed in its enabling Act behave responsibly with regards to remittances and management of their revenues.

“I don’t know why SEC is more comfortable with the Accountant-General office and I don’t want to insinuate anything, but I want to assure the FRC that from now on all that will stop.

“We are going to ensure that all agencies make FRC the major body of government that should ensure compliance with the provision of the act,” Salam added.

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