The House of Representatives’ Committee has revealed that Nigeria had lost over Nine Hundred Million Naira as revenue due to shoddy agreements in the sale and concession of government’s assets.
This was disclosed in Abuja, at the commencement of a Two-Day investigative hearing on the Governing Lease of Government’s owned assets.
Declaring the event open, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila represented by the House Leader AlHassan Ado-Doguwa said the objective of the probe was to ensure that these government’s agreement with the private sector in the major economic sectors as aviation and maritime was in the best interest of Nigerian citizens.
The Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee Mr. Daniel Asuquo noted that the many years of infrastructure deficit coupled with lack of maintenance culture had worsened the situation stressing the need for urgent review of these leases and sales agreements.
He said “as laudable as some of these policies are some of them may have been compromised”.
Mr. Asuquo also noted that the dwindling revenue of the government and the need to fund its annual budgets had forced the government to contemplate the sales of some of these assets, but due to lack of proper oversight, it had lost so much under this arrangement.
The probe panel had invited the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission ICRC, the Bureau of Public Enterprise BPE, National Council on Privatization and Commercialization, NCPC, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria FAAN and the Nigeria Ports Authority NPA among others to the hearing.
Emmanuel Ukoh
