The Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Mr Wole Oke, is sponsoring four bills that will restrict the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and Fiscal Responsibility Act from spending their revenue.
The lawmaker cited the current issues in the NPA under the leadership of the suspended Managing Director, Hadiza Bala-Usman, as one of the reasons for his action.
He affected MDAs will now be forced to remit all their revenue into the Treasury Single Account (TSA) of the Federal Government and can only spend the funds that has been approved by the National Assembly.
Oke is seeking the amendment of the NPA, NCC and NIMASA Acts as well as the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The ‘Bill for an Act to Amend the Nigerian Ports Authority Act 1999’ is seeking to introduce a new subsection under Section 13 of the NPA Act.
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It says, “13(a)(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of the principal Act, all revenues that shall accrue to the Authority under any of the sources listed in Section 13 or from any other source shall be paid into the Federation Account.
“(ii) The Authority shall not incur any expenditure except it has been appropriated by the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. However, the Authority shall be entitled to seven (7) per cent of all revenue generated as its cost of collection.”
It read, “16(a)(i) Notwithstanding any other provision of the Principal Act, all revenues that shall accrue to the Agency under any of the sources listed in Section 16 or from any other source, shall be paid into the Federation Account.”
Similarly, the ‘Bill for an Act to Amend the Nigerian Communications Act 2003’ seeks to delete the current Section 17(3) and insert a new Section 17(3) that reads, “The commission shall pay all monies accruing to it and all revenue generated by it into the Federation Account and the commission shall be entitled to seven (7) per cent of all revenue generated as its cost of collection.”
