The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) is determined to sanction companies guilty of under-assessments and underpayments that have resulted in revenue losses of N1.3 trillion to the federal government, its board chairman, Mr. Ledum Mitee said on Friday.
Mitee, addressing journalists in Uyo at the end of a five-day retreat for members of NEITI National Stakeholders Working Group, lamented that NEITI’s previous audit reports revealed that the federal government had lost that much, courtesy of the indiscretions of the companies.
To this end, he disclosed that the NEITI Board had reached a decision to punish companies established to have tendered false information or hidden their statements of accounts. He added that public officers whose actions had caused under-assessment or underpayment of revenue to the Federal Government would similarly be exposed.
“We shall invoke the statutory sanctions against relevant government agencies identified to have willingly frustrated the implementation of remedial issues in NEITI Audit Reports, Mitee said.
“NEITI can no longer sit down and allow these recoverable funds accruable to the Federal Government remain with defaulting companies. It will do good to recover these funds to finance the deficits in our annual budgets.”
He then urged the media, civil society organisations and law enforcement agencies to support the efforts of NEITI in recovering such government monies stashed in private pockets.
