Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives, has commenced investigation into a reported debt of about $852.094 million, and N1.897 billion owed the federal government by terminal operators.
It is also probing alleged failure of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) to account for billions of naira expected in revenue.
The committee chairman, Wole Oke, has therefore directed the management of the NPA to provide details on why such huge amount of money owed the federal government by terminal operators has not been recovered and paid into the federal treasury.
The investigation was the fallout of 12 audit queries raised against the agency by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation based on the financial statement of the NPA for the 2019 fiscal year.
It was noted that NPA management has only responded to one of the 12 queries from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation, saying that the sum of N269.410 million of the N1.8 billion has been recovered while the balance of N1.6 billion “invoices processed on the encumbered areas remain unpaid”.
It said further that “the sum of $504,663,452.37 is volume change on fix lease lease fee payment by APMT arising from clauses in the concession agreement between NPA and APMT out if the total sum of $852,093,730.77.
“Bills raised on encumbered areas which remained unpaid is $19,169,459.00. The following has been paid-GMT-$54,707,700.08, unpaid penalties- $11,922,642.68 and unpaid VAT-$28,693,707.07.”
