The Minister of Works, Babatunde Fashola has redirected the Senate to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Boss Mustapha over the N6 trillion unpaid ground rent which is currently under investigation.
The minister told the Senate committee led by Adamu Aliero that the SGF was in better position to answer questions on the ground rent.
The Informant247 recalls that the Senate on March 29 established a committee to launch an investigation into and retrieve the sum of N6 trillion from owners of property across Nigeria.
This came following a motion put forward by Yusuf Yusuf (PDP-Taraba).
Fashola revealed in a statement that, “About two years or so when they started passing C-of-Os to me to sign, and I said, where is the delegation because the power to sign C-of-Os is vested in the president for land belonging to the federal government and in the state governors for lands belonging to the states.
“In the process, I saw a body called the Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC), the body that was supposedly issuing receipts and all of that. Anytime I sought to find this body, nobody showed up.
“As we are getting close to the end of term, I now formally wrote, I asked the director of lands to write them, to ask to tell me what they are doing. They (PIC) replied that they are not accountable to our office and they are in the SGF office and that they report to the presidency. So, as far as your letter seeks to ask us to account for the PIC, they don’t report to us.
“I will advise that you direct your enquiries about what the PIC does to the SGF since the organisation does not report to me. I cannot account for them.”
Aliero said the Senate has recovered the sum of N18 billion, and that they were making moves to regain the remaining funds.
Aliero said, “They explained to us how much has been collected so far. They have close to N18 billion, and efforts are being made to collect the remaining money. Within the next three weeks, we will come back for an update.
“I’m sure they will be able to collect whatever is due to the federal government on all federal government property either sold or still under the hold of the federal government.”
He added, “You will agree with me that in this era of revenue shortfall, and federal government is trying to diversify all sorts of revenue other than oil. When they hear N6 trillion, definitely, a lot of attention will be given to it.
“I know the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is doing its best to diversify revenue collection. We have a nominal increase from N800 billion in 2017 to over N5 trillion now. If we have ground rent added to it, certainly it will reduce the incidence of borrowing by the federal government.”