Summons FIRS, others
The House of Representatives Committee on Finance has lamented a loss of N72 billion out of over N80 billion generated from the issuance of international passports and other services by the Nigerian Immigrations Service (NIS) to foreign and other technical partners of the Service.
The panel expressed the worry when the NIS Comptroller-General, Mohammed Babandede, appeared before it.
Babandede, who disclosed that his outfit generated N14,772,051 billion in 2018, N16,777,643,537 billion in 2019 and N5,714,780,005 billion in 2020 from passport sales, said that from the revenue generated from passports in 2018, N12,181,069,761.69 billion went to Iris Smart Technologies for 2019, N10,327,818,235.21 to Iris, while in 2020, N3,508,830,380.61 billion went to the company.
He said while the NIS generated N126,136,960 million in 2018 from ECOWAS/AA, N110,316,892 million in 2019 and N38,372,820 million in 2020, a technical partners, New Works Solution Limited, got N1,376,352,413.59 billion in 2018, N1,573,354,911.58 billion in 2019, while in 2020, N378,833,730.40 million went to them.
Besides, he said that of the revenue generated from Address Verification, a technical partner, National E-government, got N302,069,664.039 million in 2018, N276,688,519,022 million in 2019 and N82,210,586.84 in 2020.
Also, he said foreign and local technical partners, namely Iris Smart Technologies, New Works Solution Ltd, National E-government, Greater Washington, Contec (CERPAC-E-Pass), FMI (CERPAC-E-PASS), NIS (After-Payment To IPTELCOM), NSPMC, FIRS, SUB-TREASURER and IPTELCOM, got a dollar payment, totalling $92 million, representing over 80 per cent of the revenue the NIS generated from 2018-2020.
Faleke, who was apparently dissatisfied with the submission, summonned all technical partners and agencies involved.
He said: “ Comptroller-General, thank you. We will use you directly to invite all your partners to appear before this committee on Thursday.
“And when they’re coming, they should come with all their tax remittances documents, including personal income tax, withholding tax, company income tax and Value Added Tax (VAT), all from the day they signed the agreement this day.”
