The Industrial Training Fund has been asked by the House of Representatives to account for over N12 billion difference in their budget performance as of December 31, 2022.
The House Committee on Finance, chaired by James Falake, made the request during the interactive session in Abuja, where the ITF management presented the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
Falake expressed his dissatisfaction with the ITF management’s inability to generate revenue from the huge number of over 128,000 private and public quoted companies in Nigeria.
He also noticed a discrepancy of more than N12 billion between the financial statements provided by the ITF and the audited report submitted by them.
He further questioned the ITF’s operating expenditure of N39.8 billion, compared to the total revenue of N45.1 billion, with only 2,691 staff nationwide.
He warned that the ITF would have to refund the entire N3 billion to the government treasury if they failed to explain the variance within 24 hours.
The ITF Director of Finance and Accounts, Mrs Safiya Mansur, explained that the fund’s revenue came from the one per cent training contributions from public and private companies.
She said that out of the 128,000 registered companies contributing employers to the ITF, only 57,000 were up to date in their contributions.
She added that the ITF had intensified monitoring of the defaulting companies, some of which resorted to litigation but was later resolved due to the intervention of the previous house committee.
In another development, Falake asked the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission to justify why it licensed a company that lacked the capacity to deliver and received N39 billion for the supply of prepaid meters to consumers.
He said that a company, Ziglasis, was contracted by the Federal Ministry of Power and paid N39 billion to provide prepaid meters but failed to do so after collecting the money for the project.
He demanded that the vice Chairman of NERC, Mr Musiliu Oseni, bring the Managing Director of Ziglasis and officials of the Ministry of Power before the House on Nov 14 to explain why the company had not fulfilled the contract.