Senate on Thursday revealed that Federal Government lost about N585 billion to waivers between 2011 and 2014, urging immediate stoppage of waivers on rice importation.
The Upper Chamber also directed Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, and the Comptroller General of Customs, Abdullahi Dikko, to ensure that all import duties due to government are forthwith recovered.
Senate’s resolution was sequel to a motion sponsored by Senator Adebayo Ibrahim who expressed dissatisfaction with the flagrant abuse of waiver scheme which has severely eroded federal government’s rice production policy by allowing importation of huge quantities of the commodity in excess of their approved quota.
He said, “Recent Senate interaction with CBN revealed how importers have overshot their quota and consequently owing the federal government import duties running into billions of naira.”
He further argued that instead of importers paying as huge as 70 per cent duties and levies to the federal government, they were granted waivers and thereby denying Nigerians legitimate revenues.
Senator Ibrahim, also said instead of punishing defaulting importers, the outgone federal government rewarded them with fresh waivers to import more in its twilight.
Ibrahim disclosed that the federal government loses as much as N71 billion on duty waivers to importers of rice, palm oil, energy equipment, steel and vegetable oil annually, recalling how the President Goodluck Jonathan administration gave import duty waivers to 10 rice and palm oil importers, amounting to N150 billion in 2011.
Speaking in favour of the motion, Senator Ibrahim Gobir (Sokoto North), said findings on waivers had shown that N585 billion worth of waivers were granted by the federal government between 2011 and 2014.
Gobir noted that if the huge sum was shared among the 36 states of the federation, each of the three senatorial districts in a state will have N5.3 billion which he said was enough to provide 5,000 jobs in various states.
He therefore called for a complete stop of waivers. Also speaking, Senator Dino Melaye (Kogi West), said recent findings showed that over N400 billion had been granted as waivers in recent times.
Senate in its resolution set up an ad-hoc committee chaired by Senator Adamu Aliero to look into the waivers policy regime and simultaneously carry out its holistic review with a view to determining government revenues lost to waiver policy.