The House of Representatives has given the Chief Executive Officers of telecommunications service providers a seven-day ultimatum to appear before its Committee on Finance on an arrest warrant will be issued on them by the parliament.

Chairman of the committee, Mr James Faleke, had at the plenary on Thursday reported to the House via a motion of urgent public importance, which unanimously adopted, that several summons issued to 15 telecoms operators, including MTN Nigeria, Glo Mobile Limited, Airtel Nigeria and 9Mobile, had been shunned.

Faleke said their non-appearance was frustrating the investigation by the committee of the alleged $30bn leakages in the sector due to alleged foreign exchange frauds.

He recalled that the House, on March 5, 2020, passes a resolution mandating the joint Committees of Finance, Banking and Currency to investigate the over $30bn revenue leakages in the sector.

“In order to give a fair hearing, we wrote letters to the companies and some of them, under the auspices of Registered Trustees of Telecoms Operators found it necessary to go to court. And on the 13th of March, the court delivered judgment in favour of the National Assembly, that the National Assembly has the powers to invite anybody,” the lawmaker said.

Faleke further said, “In the Nigeria that we are today, we are in a very critical situation. Many of these companies have been evading taxes over and over again, taking loans for infrastructure.

There is a company that operates in Nigeria 100 per cent but only 10 per cent of its interest is taxed in Nigeria, while the remaining 90 per cent is taken to Mauritius.

This company only has a representative office in Nigeria. What this means is that the remaining 90 per cent, running into several billions of dollars, which are paid to Mauritius, is not taxed in Nigeria.

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“We have companies who took loans in foreign currency for equipment loan, brought the goods to Nigeria and the next day, these equipment were credited to another country.

They took the loan of about $90m, the money went into the company account and the next day, the money was transferred to shareholders in Mauritius. They bring these goods in for record purpose, so that they can get the capital allowances that is usually given  for equipment that are not used in Nigeria. These are equipment that are supposed to be brought in and duties paid.”

He added, “By going to court, they sought to prolong and delay the activities of the National Assembly. If we allow this to continue, then we have no business being here. We have figures of tax evasion running into several billions of dollars against these companies, but we didn’t want to believe these figures. Rather than submit their document, they felt the best way was to head to court.

“This parliament has powers to summon anybody, including Mr President. If we need him to come and answer questions, he will be invited and he will come here, talk less of individuals who are making money from this country refusing to obey the summons of the National Assembly.”

Several lawmakers who spoke on the matter, including Victor Nwokolo, Nasir Ahmed and Lynda Ikpeazu called for a through investigation and prosecution of companies working against the economy.

The Deputy Speaker, Ahmed Wase, said,

“Our nation is bleeding and so, we need to work round the clock to get every finance that we need to run the country. It is funny that when those companies were coming to be registered, they came in their individual capacities and went to the Corporate Affairs Commission to seek registration.

“Now, when it gets to fulfilling what is due to our nation, they decide to head to the court. It is unfortunate that there are Nigerians who are assisting in this regard and I would have said that such lawyers should be sanctioned. It is only in Nigeria that this kind of thing can happen. Everywhere in the world today, nations are working hard to ensure that every dime gets to government.

“It is unfortunate that those Nigerians who are supposed to help the system are the one working against it. When such orders are given, it must be complied with, failure which the appropriate sanction be applied.”

Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Mr Wole Oke, noted that in obedience to the Constitution, the president goes to the parliament to lay the annual budget and whenever it is required, he goes there to answer questions.

Oke said, “It is funny that people come under tax avoidance when in actual fact they are evading tax. There is a need for the Committee on Finance to work along that line.

“The provisions of the laws of the land expects that you render account to the Auditor General of the Federation. Unfortunately, the Auditor General cried in his report for 2017 that about 323 MDAs refused to render accounts. Such include the Nigeria Customs Service and the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

The agency that is saddled with the responsibility to collect taxes has yet to submit its 2018 audited account on which basis we formulate our budget.

“There should not be sacred cows because nobody is above the law. If the president comes to this parliament in obedience to the Constitution, why can’t a CEO of an organisation who can be appointed? Unfortunately, several agencies including government subsidiaries defile the TSA Act. Some of these subsidiary companies now operate with commercial banks.”

The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, in his ruling, stated that the House would exercise its powers on the firms if they failed to comply with the last summons to be issued to them.

Gbajabiamila, who noted that democracy rests on a tripod of the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. Who asked why persons and organisations answer summons by the two other arms of except the legislature.

He said, “This House decided to set up a committee headed by the Chairman of Finance to look into the dwindling revenue, which will affect us and shake the very foundation of our democracy if we don’t make the revenue upon which our budget is based.

The committee is to find out ways and means upon which we can look for alternative sources of income. 

 

“In their work, the committee discovered shocking infractions by certain organisations, especially private organisations in form of taxes.

They wrote and these organisations responded by saying they were not going to appear before the committee because they have filed a motion in court.

“The MTN, Globacom of this world are not above the law. We said it at the beginning of this 9th Assembly that every now and then, we shall shake the table. This may just be one of those times when we shall shake the table.

From the House of Representatives or the National Assembly, we will not sit down and accept to be handicapped because some people somewhere are holding on to the revenue of the country.

“I am sure that if MTN were summoned by the South African parliament, they will rush to honour the summons. Now, they are summoned by the Nigerian parliament but they are saying they will not honour it.

I believe that the committee should write to them one more time so that we exhaust the issue of fair hearing as contained in the Constitution.

“There is what we called contempt of court. There is also contempt of the legislature. If you fail to honour the summon of the legislature, you have committed contempt of the legislature and the consequence of that is arrest as proscribed in the Constitution.

The constitution gives us the power of arrest and so the telecom companies are subject to summon, arrest and even fine.

“We will not allow these organisations to being down our democracy. Issue one more notice to them and if in seven days you do not hear from them, then we should kick start the process and arrest those who need to be arrested.”