The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has failed to submit its Annual Financial Statements (AFS) to the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) since 2012.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act (2007) provides that each government agency must submit its AFS three months after the end of each financial year.
However, a report “Where is the Money”? by the Growth Initiatives for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) Nigeria Project, presented in Abuja, yesterday, indicated that the NIS has defaulted in the submission of its AFSs in the last 10 years.
The GIFT Nigeria Project is under the Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE) Project implemented by Palladium Group with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The report identified several other federal government agencies which were grouped under the “Below Average Compliance Category” to include: Solid Minerals Development Fund, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading PLC, Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Abuja Security and Commodity Exchange Commission, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency and National Food Reserve Agency, all of which have not submitted AFSs since 2016.
According to the report, the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria, Gurara Water Management Authority, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board were in arrears of AFSs submission since 2017.
The Centre for Management Development was identified as having submitted its AFSs to date, as it topped 58 other agencies which had only 2021 AFSs to submit.
Detailed analysis of the report showed that 73 agencies had outstanding AFSs between 2018 to 2021; with 19 others having outstanding AFSs pre-2018.
The Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FSC) carries out the reconciliation of accounts of MDAs based on the financial statements from the previous year which they are mandated to publish latest by the end of the first quarter of every year.
The reconciliation was meant to lead to the exposition of possible shortfalls in remittance to government coffers by MDAs and concomitant demand to pay up established balances.
Section 22 of the FRC Act provides, “Notwithstanding the provisions of any written law governing the corporation, each corporation shall establish a general Reserve Fund and shall allocate thereto at the end of each financial year, one-fifth of its operating surplus for the year.
“The balance of the operating surplus shall be paid to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not later than one month following the statutory deadline for publishing each corporation’s accounts.”
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