The House of Representatives has accused the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) of hiding billions of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) thereby depriving the nation of its financial responsibility.

The House Committee on Finance subsequently threatened to remove the Managing Director and other top officials from the NCAA to allow more transparent leaders.

The chairman of the committee, James Faleke (APC-Lagos), said this at the resumed interactive session with revenue-generating agencies in Abuja on Friday.

Faleke stated that the NCAA was hiding the revenue generated, saying that was why it had refused to give the committee the requested data on the number of passengers that flew airlines.

He, however, promised that the committee would get the money no matter how hard the NCAA tried to hide it.

The lawmaker said: “You people have always reported a negative balance. I have done so much research this year on NCAA, which is why I have so much information.

“If we further compel you to provide such information, somebody else will occupy that office.”

The committee unanimously agreed that if the NCAA came back and could not produce the requested document on or before December 14, it would affect their seat.

The committee said it was empowered by law to scrutinise the NCAA’s document and must be tendered on request, adding that anything such as presenting the document would amount to a waste of time.

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Faleke demanded comprehensive details on how the NCAA arrived at the data of passengers flying month by month and which airline carried the passengers submitted before it.

He urged the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) to also produce its reconciliation of the revenue shared by the NCAA, adding that it was not enough for the NCAA to give it N2 billion without proper reconciliation.

Faleke, however, asked the NCAA to produce the total number of passengers that flew all airlines on a monthly basis, the airline, and  how many passengers they carried.

Others included the destination and the fare charge, where the five per cent of the money retired was, and which bank account and distribution pattern of that sum and evidence of distribution

The committee also threatened to issue an arrest warrant for Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) if it failed to appear before it on December 4.

In their response to various allegations, the NCAA representatives, Captain Ibrahim Dambazau and Abubakar Gachi, said the data of passengers being requested was presented earlier and it was correct, contrary to the committee’s claim of presenting fake data.

They said the data was analysed with the same document presented before the committee.

NIMET, on its part, said it used to do account reconciliation with the NCAA before now but it stopped in 2017 with Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).

In the documents earlier submitted to the committee, NCAA declared N12.7 billion revenue from the share of the gross revenue allotted to regulatory agencies in the industry.

The committee, however, said the amount was below the computed gross revenue share received by NCAA worth N66 billion, and realised from both revenues accrued from local and international travels in 2022.

The Star