The House of Representatives Committee on Finance yesterday said it uncovered how the Transition Company of Nigeria (TCN) spent N207 billion on office maintenance in 2021.

This happened as the agency complained of inadequate funding by the government.

The committee rejected the agency’s submission, presented by the Director of Finance, Allen Dutse, and directed its Managing Director to appear before the committee with a properly prepared Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) document.

During yesterday’s interactive session on the MTEF and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) with the committee, the House committee asked the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to shore up its revenue generation drive as it was capable of surpassing the annual revenue target of N15 billion as against the N1.2 billion it remitted to the government coffers last year.

Addressing the session, Deputy Chairman Musa Abdullahi Seidu said the House committee was worried that there was so much unapproved spending by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which had constituted a drain pipe to government resources.

Seidu and other committee members lashed out at some of the invited agencies for failing to render their annual audited accounts to the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) in accordance with the provisions of the law.

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The deputy chairman urged the chief executive officers (CEOs) of all government agencies to use their experiences in either the private or public sector to bear in their new roles.

He added that the expenditures and remittances of the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) must be guided by extant provisions of the Finance Act 2021.

Seidu told FCCPC’s CEO, Babatunde Irukekere, that the agency could surpass the N15 billion target it set for the 2022 financial year as against to the N1.2 billion it remitted to the CRF in the 2021 financial year.

The deputy chairman recalled that the committee had queried what it called outrageous figures in the budget’s sub-heads of the agency and their IGR remittances report to the panel.

He noted that the bills on computer purchase and other sub-heads, such as travel and tours, was outrageous.

But the FCCPC boss said the agency was no longer a revenue generating agency per se.

According to him, the National Assembly has altered the agency’s enabling law, reducing its remittances from 80 to 50 per cent of the IGR.

Also, TCN’s the Executive Director (Finance and Account) Ahmed Isah-Dutse said the agency was underfunded by the government as it budgeted N130 billion and got N7 billion in 2020 and budgeted N168 billion but got N6 billion in 2022.

But the lawmakers directed the Clerk to the House Committee to re-invite the Managing Director of the agency to appear in person.

It said the DFA needed to rework the revenue remittances of the agency, adding that the submission was unreliable and unacceptable to the committee.