NCAA: Senate demands details of alleged frivolous N9bn expenditure

The Senate on Wednesday has directed the Management of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), to appear before her in Thursday with details of alleged frivolous spendings of about N9bn of its generated revenue.

Chairman Senate Committee on Finance and Co-Chairman Senate joint committee on Finance and National Planning on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) Senator Solomon Olamilekan (Lagos West).

The Charge by the Senate to the Authority’s management was based on the inability of the Director of Finance, Bilkisu Sani to convince the expanded panel that its claim of spendings on training justified the frittering of N9bn by the NCAA at a time the nation is desperately seeking to ramp up its revenue.

The committee said where the NCAA failed to justify the spending of N9bn on the training of 1,400 staff whose wage bill climaxed at N560m annually it would be forced to amend the laws and draw on the excesses being frittered by the management of NCAA.

The Director of Finance had told the committee that it generated over N18bn each for the fiscal year 2018 and 2019 but made a contribution of N1.6bn to the national coffers for the year 2018 and less than N4bn for the year 2019.

Sani said the NCAA had already remitted N700mn into the national coffers so far for the 2020 fiscal year.

Her words: “In 2018, we contributed N1.6bn in 2019 we contributed N3bn for 2020 we contributed N700m to the federal government.”

“The NCAA coordinates the activities of the aviation industry, for it to be able to that it should be able to participate in the oversight activities over the airlines.

“Part of that activity is the inspection of the aircraft ensuring that the Pilots and Engineers are actually doing the activities they are expected to do to keep the industry safe and secured.

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“So, the major activities of NCAA is the training of its staff to make sure that they are able and have the capacity to check whatever they are supposed to check to make the industry safe for the public.

“So it is fair to have them trained and part of this training are international training to make sure that they are able to check the activities of the airlines,” She stated.

This explanation was not satisfactory to the committee members who prodded further on the details of the training that could gulp over N9bn.

Chairman of the joint Senate panel told the representative of the NCAA that her response does not meet their expectation and therefore would want the Director of Finance to return Thursday with her Chief operating officer to come and explain these spendings or it would be redirected to the consolidated account.

Olamilekan queried: “You have a wage bill of N6bn and you remitted N3bn as surplus, of revenue out of 18bn are you saying that you have expended N9bn in inspecting or ensuring the aircraft is in God condition.

“I want to know what all that money was spent for because this is another veritable source for us to save money

“We might insist that you only pay salaries we release part of or a certain amount for you to run recurrent and the rest be paid to the consolidated revenue account of the federal government.

“Except you are able to convince this committee of sensitive issues related to the money for us to be able to grant you the powers to spend these monies

“You spell to us in clear terms because frivolous expenditure will not be entertained. The whole world is currently bleeding, frivolous expenditure will not be tolerated N9bn on this side of the divide, I tell you will go a long way.”

The efforts by the Senate to ramp up funds from revenue-generating agencies to fund budget deficit through the public hearing is a five-day public hearing and continues tomorrow.

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