Reps C’ttee accuses INTELS of short changing FG

*INTELS owing $19.9m in revenue
*House c’ttee carpets firm’s absence from hearing

The House of Representatives ad hoc investigating the termination of the the contract between the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Integrated Logistics Services (INSTELS) Nigeria Limited on Wednesday, accused the logistics firm of short changing the federal government in revenue remittances under the subsisting contract.
Chairman of the House ad hoc committee, Rep. Pally Iriase made the accusation at the public hearing held yesterday.
Rep. Iriase, who is the deputy whip of the House expressed displeasure that in spite of the invite and publications made in media, notifying all stakeholders of the commencement date of the investigative hearing, officials of INTELS failed to attend the hearing.
He described the action of INTELS management as an affront on the National Assembly and an indication that the company based on evidence before the House committee has been exploiting loopholes in the existing contract with the NPA to deny the government legitimate revenue.
“With what we’re hearing, it’s very clear that INTELS is very comfortable with what they’re doing by short changing Nigeria.
“By the time we’re through, they’ll know not to treat the National Assembly with levity and disdain,” the lawmaker from Edo state declared.
The lawmaker declared that the committee the Onne Port in Port-Harcourt, Rivers state to ensure that the logistics services company is not flouting the contractual agreement in terms of revenue generation because of the face off with the NPA.
However, attempts by Irabor Kenneth, who referred to himself as the legal supervisor of INTELS to make an appearance for the company under the excuse that the letter from the committee inviting INTELS top management to the hearing only reached their office on Tuesday night was rebuffed.
Instead, the committee frowned at the attitude of the company’s management, just as it refused to allow Irabor make verbal testimony to the committee since he had no written mandate to speak for INTELS at the hearing.
Rather, the committee said that, it will rely on the written memorandum submitted by INTELS to make its recommendations to the House.
In her testimony, Managing Director of the NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman, disclosed that INTELS is owing the government $19.9million as outstanding revenue collected out of an initial amount of $48million.
The NPA chief executive said that the $48million is the amount INTELS ought to have remitted to the government between November 2016-December 2017, adding that the logistics services firm has paid $28.1million out of the original debt while another payment of $14.5million is awaiting official confirmation.
She stated that the disagreement with INTELS stemmed from the company’s refusal to comply with the Treasury Single Account (TSA) mandate of the federal government, adding that after the threat to terminate the contract based on advice from the minister of justice, the company apologized and has begun since 2017 to pay all monies generated on behalf of the government into the account provided by the NPA.
Before now, Hadiza asserted that INTELS made arbitrary payments to the government through the NPA at its discretion.
“Apart from the 28 per cent agency fee accruable to INTELS, there was no agreement on how the balance of the 72 per cent revenue collected should be shared and this was done at INTELS discretion before now.
“We’ve asked INTELS to pay revenue not remitted with interest. Oil companies had complained of inability of government to collect its revenue, rather than a private company collecting statutory payments on behalf of the government,” she added.
According to her, the NPA is carrying out a reconciliation of all revenue collected by INTELS by the middle of 2018 to ensure that there is no deliberate effort by the logistics services company to generate lower revenue or condone leakages.