The Senate on Tuesday, through its public accounts committee, vacated the query of N62.2 billion under remittance, slammed on the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation in the 2019 audit report.

This followed the committee’s resolution, which held an investigative session on all 77 queries on financial infractions raised against Customs in the 2019 and 2020 audit reports, with the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi.

The committee, chaired by Senator Ibrahim Dankwabo, also resolved to establish a small committee to reconcile the remaining 74 queries.

Customs smooth sail at the investigative session, followed convincing responses made to queries one, two and three read to a representative of the Auditor-General of the Federation.

He said that while N691.242 billion was the total revenue collected by customs, N629.23 billion was remitted, leaving a balance of N62.2 billion unremitted into the federation account.

In his response to the query, the Customs CG said the N62.2 billion classified as unremitted or under-remitted in the 2019 audit report was the total sum of levies collected by customs on behalf of other agencies and was not for remittance into the federation account.

“The under-remittance of N62.2 billion levelled against Customs in the 2019 audit report was wrongly arrived at through misclassification of levies collected.

“While most of the levies are to be collected and remitted into the federation account, others like the ones on local production of wheat, textiles and wines, etc., do not go into the federation account.

“The totality of which accounted for the alleged unremitted N62.2 billion,” he said.

The Customs CG offered similar explanations in response to queries two and three, which prompted a member of the committee, Senator Babangida Hussaini (APC-Jigawa North-West), to wonder why the customs allowed the queries to reach the level of the committee’s investigation.

“I was in the civil service just like the chairman of the committee, Senator Ibrahim Dankwabo, before venturing into politics.

“Queries one, two and three that you have responded to, supposed to have been trashed out at reconciliation level with the auditors and not allowed to get to this stage,” he said.

The customs boss, however, reminded the committee members that the years under review were periods when the Senate and customs had frosty relationships.

(NAN)