{"id":184493,"date":"2020-01-14T11:57:19","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T10:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=184493"},"modified":"2020-01-14T12:00:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T11:00:33","slug":"efcc-to-investigate-telecom-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=184493","title":{"rendered":"EFCC to investigate telecom providers"},"content":{"rendered":"
Alhaji Lado Abdullahi, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on ICT, says EFCC will join the committee to investigate telecom providers over alleged non-remittance of the one per cent annual turnover to NITDA.<\/p>\n

Abdullahi told newsmen in a telephone interview on Monday that effort of the committee is to ensure it met the one-month deadline by the House.<\/p>\n

The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Act says telecoms providers should remit a percentage of their annual turnover to NITDA to install infrastructure.<\/p>\n

A source at NITDA alleged that telecom providers owed the agency over N200billion which he said had caused Nigeria to lose a verifiable source of revenue generation thus hampering development.<\/p>\n

Abdullahi said the house would ensure that the Chief Executive Officers of the nation\u2019s telecom providers accounted for their alleged failure to remit the fund to NITDA for several years.<\/p>\n

The lawmaker alleged that the telecom providers had not remitted the said amount since the Act became effective in 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur committee has been given a month deadline following a motion sponsored by a member from Ukwa East\/West federal constituency in December 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe committee has not started working because the motion was moved during our last session before we went on recess and we have not resumed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when we resume, we will be able to investigate the matter. Hopefully, by 20th of this month, the committee will take off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Abdullahi said that the committee would write the telecom providers to furnish it with vital information about their annual turnover starting from 2007, when NITDA Act was enacted, to date.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to know when last they released their turnover to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) from 2007 till date.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also need to know whether the FIRS too gets information from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFIRS will also provide us with the turnover of each service provider from 2007 till date.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Attorney-General, Accountant-General, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will furnish us with useful information to do our job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe process ought to have been that once the FIRS collects the money, it makes it known to the Accountant-General, who will release same to the Ministry of Finance and then to NITDA.<\/p>\n

\u201cmajority of them were defaulters which necessitated the investigation of the matter and to prosecute whoever was involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are involving the Attorney-General, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Department of State Services (DSS) and EFCC.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny CEO coming to make presentation has to be on oath. They will be summoned before the national assembly to resolve the issue. The Attorney-General too will do the investigation and prosecute them accordingly,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

NAN recalls that the house had directed the Abdullahi-led committee to investigate the collection and remittance of the levy on behalf of the National Information Technology Development Fund (NITDF).<\/p>\n

The directive followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance moved by Uzoma Nkem-Abonta on the need to investigate payment and remittances of taxes acruable to NITDF established by NITDA Act 2007.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alhaji Lado Abdullahi, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on ICT, says EFCC will join the committee to investigate telecom providers over alleged non-remittance of the one per cent annual turnover to NITDA. Abdullahi told newsmen in a telephone interview on Monday that effort of the committee is to ensure it met the one-month deadline by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2658,866,4300],"class_list":["post-184493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-a","tag-efcc","tag-nitda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}