By Henry Umoru & Joseph Erunke

ABUJA — The Senate, yesterday, disclosed that Nigeria lost a total of N1.3 trillion to waivers granted on importation of rice and other agricultural commodities between 2011 and 2014.

Peeved by the development, the Red Chamber has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, to go all out to recover the lost revenue just as it stopped the Federal Government from granting any waivers on import duties in the country.

The development was sequel to a motion entitled: “Indiscriminate use and abuse of waivers for rice importation,” sponsored by Senator Adebayo Rafiu Ibrahim (APC, Kwara South), which he tabled for debate on the floor of Senate plenary.

The Red Chamber particularly mandated the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, and the  Comptroller General of Customs, Abdullahi Dikko, to ensure that all import duties due to government was recovered immediately.

But it went further to set up an ad-hoc committee chaired by Senator Adamu Aliero (APC, Kebbi Central) to look into the import duty policy regime and simultaneously carry out a holistic review of the programme.

The committee was also mandated to look into all issues relating to waivers, concessions and grants with a view to determining full government revenues in relation to this policy.

Earlier, in his lead debate, Senator Adebayo Ibrahim, said the flagrant abuse of waiver scheme had severely eroded Federal Government’s rice production policy by allowing importation of huge quantities of the commodity in excess of their approved quota.

According to him, a 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.

He also said instead of punishing defaulting importers, the outgone Federal Government rewarded them with fresh waivers to import more in its twilight.

Ibrahim also 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 Federal Government gave import duty waivers to 10 rice and palm oil importers, amounting to N150 billion in 2011.

He regretted that the Nigeria Customs which ought to enforce compliance with duty policy at the borders has failed to live up to its responsibility.

Supporting the motion, Senator Ibrahim Gobir (APC, 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 argued that if this 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 (APC, Kogi West) said recent findings showed that over N400 billion had been granted as waivers in recent times.