It has been exposed that the Federal Government lost a staggering N447.4bn to import duty waivers, concessions and grants fraud from 2011 to 2015. This was revealed yesterday by a report of the Senate ad-hoc committee on import duty waivers, concessions and grants, chaired by Senator Adamu Aliero (APC, Kebbi Central).
Delivering the bang in Plenary yesterday, Aliero said the country lost N78.4bn in 2011, N128.5bn in 2012, N46bn in 2013, N87.6bn in 2014 and N106.7bn in 2015 to fraudulent waivers, concessions and grants.
Quoting a document from the Nigeria Customs Service, he said there were huge revenue leakages between 2011 and 2015 due to gross abuse of import duty waivers, concessions and grants by implementing Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), especially the Budget Office of the federation.
His committee looked into the import duty waivers on rice, sugar automobile and hospitality sector and discovered a fraud of N65bn, he said.
An angry Senate, in passing resolutions on the report, requested the federal government to recover N24bn from Olam International Limited (a subsidiary of Stallion Group) and Millan Group for exceeding the quota system granted them on rice importation.
It also mandated the government to recover N10.3bn from Dangote Limited, Kersuk Farms, Bua Group, Elephant Group and Golden Penny for violating the rice import quota granted them. The senators also said the supposed transfer of 100,000 metric tons of rice by the Jamatul Nasrul Islam (JNI) to Elephant Group was unlawful, and therefore, the import duty in the sum of N687m must be recovered.
While on Sugar, the Senate said the Bua Sugar Refinery should pay N31.7bn to the coffers of federal government for obtaining waivers without backward integration programme. The same goes for Meditarion Nigeria Limited. It should be made to pay the import duty for criminal under invoicing of 2,161,440kg of St. Louis cube sugar as at June, 2014 amounting to N82m, the Senate ordered.
Responding after the presentation, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, said the affected companies must be made to cough out the money.
“This is clearly sabotage on our economy, the money must be recovered and the perpetrators must be dealt with. After three months, we will look at the implementation of our recommendations on this waive.”
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