House Summons Minister, NPA Over N166 Billion, Others

The House of Representatives has summoned the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, and the management of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) to give details of the revenue accruing to the NPA as at December 31, 2016, amounting to N166,685,929,000, which were not properly captured in the statement of account of the agency.

The minister and NPA management, which were initially expected to appear before the House Committee on Public Accounts yesterday, pleaded for another date to cause appearance, and were given a July 8 to appear before the committee.

They are also to explain the cost of services rendered to the NPA amounting to about N103.996 billion, including channels and waterways maintenance, N65.130 billion; and port and quays expenses of N38.412 billion.

The minister and the authority are further expected to respond to audit queries contained in the comments of the Auditor General of the Federation on the group financial statement of the NPA for 2016.

In the AuGF’s query signed by Adolphus Aghughu and dated May 24, 2021, he said the minister and the NPA management are to give a breakdown of maintenance, budgetary provisions and evidence of work done on the channels and waterways as the examination of the accounts revealed that the channels and waterways maintenance rose from N44.427 billion in 2015 to N64.130 billion in 2016, which is an increase of over N20 billion.

The auditor general said the minister and the NPA management are also to explain what happened to the dividend income of N643.006 million received from their joint venture partners as well as interest income of about N97.8 million and N28.7 million being interest from bank deposits and interest on loan and receivables.

Other queries against the NPA include administrative expenses of N61 billion, which include professional charges of N638 million; donation and subscription of N1.88 billion; exchange loss of N7,3 billion; defined benefit expenses of N11.4 billion and director’s remuneration of N4.2 million.

The AuGF also identified what it called understatement of depreciation charges to the tune of N6.4 billion, stressing that the provision made against eight classes of property amounted to N4.472 billion as against N10.891 million arrived at during vetting.

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