No more federal allocation for FIRS, Customs, NBC, 57 others – Senate

The Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigeria Customs Service, Security and Exchange Commission, National Broadcasting Commission, and Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone Commission are some of the names of federal agencies to be deprived of the allocation.

The decision was premised on the conviction that the agencies generate enough revenue to fund their overheads and payment of salaries, and would therefore not need to be funded from the national budget.

Investigations from a credible source noted that the Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning had concluded plans to include the proposal in its report which would be submitted when the Senate resumes on September 15.

The joint panel on Tuesday had an interactive session that lasted for five days with the various Federal Government revenue generating agencies based on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper.

The panel was discontent with their poor revenue profile, huge wage bill, and poor remittances to the Consolidated Revenue Fund account.

The Chairman of the joint committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, told the heads of the agencies after the session that many of them had no business receiving allocation from the federation account.

He said the Senate would update the Fiscal Responsibility Act to limit the agencies power to spend money as they choose to.

He said some of the agencies like the Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone Commission, had willingly pulled out of being funded from the federal budget, meaning they would no longer collect allocation for salaries and overhead from the federation account.

A member of the Senate joint committee said that the panel had identified 60 agencies that would henceforth be funding the national budget and be responsible for their overheads and salaries of their workers.

He said the affected revenue generating agencies cut across the agriculture, aviation, communications, education, energy, environment, health, maritime, media and science and technology sectors of the economy.

He said, “We want to put an end to indolence and wastage of revenue. Many of the agencies have more than enough to remain on their own but they are still being funded from the national budget. We are doing this in the interest of Nigerians because we are tired of passing budgets that are not implementable due to deficit.”

Senator Adeola didn’t divulge any information about the number of agencies that would be removed from the national budget but said some had volunteered to be excluded from being funded from the budget and that their list had been compiled.

He said apart from those who would be placed on zero allocation, some would henceforth bear their overheads and cost of executing capital projects.

He stated, “We have invited all revenue generating agencies and ministries that are directly affected to ask questions bothering on the document before us and to deliberate on how we can improve the revenue of the Federal Government.

“From what we have seen and witnessed, it goes to show that we have a lot of work to do in the areas of ensuring that all government revenues get to the coffers of the government. Frivolous expenditure being used to take away the revenue will be blocked.

“This is just the beginning of good things to come. Once this has commenced, we would have a lot of savings and seriousness on the part of the government agencies.”

He said they were trying to put together the cost of collection to be given to all the revenue generating agencies so the government could have enough revenue at its disposal to fund the budget.

“With the repositioning that we have started, we will ensure that all revenue-generating agencies play their critical roles in supporting government’s programmes and policies,” he added.