Sanni Onogu, Abuja
The Senate Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning has given Director General (DG) of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Yakubu Ibn Mohammed up till Monday to submit the amount of debts owed the broadcast outfit and list of the debtors.
Lead Chair of the Joint Committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, gave the directive when Mohammed appeared before the panel during its ongoing stakeholders’ interactive session on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) in Abuja.
Adeola frowned at a situation where the DG did not disclose some of its revenue and expenditure in the documents it submitted to the Committee.
He said that it was wrong for the NTA not to have disclosed to it revenues that accrued to the agency from partnership agreements with other organisations, like Startimes.
Adeola said: “All revenues accrued to revenue generating agencies should go to the consolidated revenue fund henceforth.
“We will only approve for you, the cost of production. This will put a stop to wastage in the system and the below the line expenditure.
“This will shore up the revenue of the government. We are going to ask all revenue generating agencies to start doing what FIRS is doing.
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“That is to generate revenue, deduct cost of production and remit the rest to the consolidated revenue fund in line with the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“There is no point in giving target to the agencies. They will perform more if they know that the higher revenue they collect, the more money they get as operational cost. That is going to be a permanent solution.
“Before any agency can touch any revenue it generates, it must be appropriately declared but the documents that the NTA presented to us are not the true position of the revenue acruable to it.
“On the NTA debt profile, we want to see the names of the debtors, the date and amount involved, and the approving authorities must be stated in a tabular form.
“All the documents must be provided by the NTA’s DG by 11am on Monday.”
Mohammed said that even though he is aware that some persons or agencies are indebted to NTA, he would not name any figure that may mislead the Committee.
He said he will get back to the Committee on Monday on the amount and list of debtors after getting it from staff entrusted with that responsibility.
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