By Levinus Nwabughiogu 

Abuja—For issuing capital allowances to many companies without proper documentation in the oil and gas trade zone, the Public Account Committee, PAC, of the House of Representatives yesterday grilled the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Otunba Niyi Adebayo.

Others questioned alongside the minister were heads of parastatals under the ministry as well as some top officials of the Ministry.

The meeting was based on several queries from the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation to the ministry.

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Apart from the issuance of capital allowances, other infractions committed by the ministry included non-rendition of audited accounts and expenditures from Service Wide Vote from 2013 to date.

Speaking at the meeting, Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke ( PDP-Osun), regretted that public officials had developed the habit of dishonouring their invitations on public accounts.

He explained that before the coming of the Finance Act, only permanent secretaries were invited to answer such queries, disclosing that the Act had made the invitations of the ministers compulsory.

He said: “These people are appointees of the President through your office. By the provisions of the constitution, the President has often come to the National Assembly and yet, his appointees refused to come. 

”If they cannot do the job they are asked to do, they should resign because there are those ready to do the job.

“We did not want to get to the level of issuing warrant of arrest for the heads of agencies. We felt that if we invite you and ask you to come with them, they will respect you and come. We were right, today, they are here with you.

“We want them to come and explain to the Nigerian people how they spent public resources in their disposal. Is that too much to ask? If the President will come to the parliament, why wont his appointees? 

”It is for accountability and transparency, the Parliament is not after anyone, even as you are here today physically, the Director General of the Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON, is still not here, he has been avoiding the committee. He has always been seeking for an extension of time for our invitations.”

The minister, however, appealed to the committee to give him and his team more time to gather their documents and come back for proper defence of the audit queries.

According to him, some of the issue raised were just brought to his knowledge at the hearing.

He, therefore,  promised to return with the permanent secretary for the presentation. 

The documents presented before the committee revealed that the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment had issued about 4,672 certificate of capital allowance worth about N7,865 trillion to 2,203 companies between January 2017 and December 2021.

The documents also revealed that within the same period, the Ministry recorded what they described as dis-allowance (finding after an audit that a business or individual taxpayer was not entitled to a deduction or other tax benefit claimed on a tax return) of N101.553 billion.

Capital allowance is the practice of allowing a tax payer to get tax relief on capital expenditure by allowing it to be deducted against their annual taxable income.