ABUJA – By Olusegun Lawrence The Senate has indicted some Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs in the indiscriminate granting of import duty waivers and concessions by the immediate past administration between 2011- 2015.
Presenting its report at plenary on Tuesday, chairman, Senate Ad-hoc Committee on Import Duty waivers, Concessions and Grants, Senator Adamu Aliero, listed the major companies that benefitted from the fraud and Dangote Nigeria Limited, Elephant group and others in waivers, concessions and grants worth about N447 billion.
The Committee discovered gross abuse of waivers, grant and Concession by Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDA) especially the Budget Office of the Federation.
According to the report, the Budget Office continued to abuse Presidential approval process through reliance on staled delegated power by former President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, then Minister of Finance.
Also, the report revealed that customs duty waivers and concessions have been used by the budget office of the Federation to entrench a very destructive patronage system to our economy, where by very few operators in the economy were singled-out for favours resulting to unfair competition in the system.
Report obtained by the committee from Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) revealead that Federal government lost N78 billion in 2011 , 2012- N128billion, 2013- N46 billion, 2014- N87 billion, 2015- N106 billion through waivers, Concession and grants.
In the rice sector alone, the Committee asked the Federal government to recover N1 billion from Dangote Limited, Kersuk Farms N1.9 billion, Bua group N3.7 billion, Elephant group N1.5 billion, Golden Penny N284 milliom, Millan group N1.8 billion because they did not meet the criteria for granting waivers.
In the Automobile sector, the Senate also asked the Federal government to henceforth stop granting waivers for concessionary import of vehicles for international meetings and conferences as it leades to unfair competition.
In Sugar sector, the Senate urged Federal government to order Bua sugar Refinery to pay N31 billion only on importation of raw sugar for obtaining waivers backward integration programme.
“The Federal Government should impose severe sanctions against companies found to have benefited from import duty waivers, concessions and grants, but at the same time engage in acts of economic sabotage by diverting some vessels to neighboring countries of Benin and Niger Republics for the commodities to be smuggled into Nigeria through land borders,” the Aliero report recommended.
