(2 minutes read)
· The illegal activities and faulty practices followed by its
companies would have sapped Nigeria close to N74 billion in the last
three years in the mining sector alone, according to mineral audit
reports by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
(NEITI), a watchdog tracking transparency in the mining sector of the
country.
· The main heads under which the discrepancies in the audited
and governmental data arise are payment of royalties, free on board
(FOB) value of the minerals exported, apart from very high incidence
of illegal mining.
The illegal activities and faulty practices followed by its companies
would have sapped Nigeria close to N4 billion in the last three years
in the mining sector alone, according to mineral audit reports by the
Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), a
watchdog tracking transparency in the mining sector of the country.
The companies have defrauded the national exchequer through various
corrupt practices, such as non-remittance of revenues, unlicensed
mining and evasion of taxes, illegal practices, and incessant
smuggling of solid minerals out of the country.
A review of the audit reports of NEITI and the reconciled data of the
government show many incongruities, particularly relating to export
data of some mining companies. For instance, the analysis reveals that
the data relating to the export of some mining companies are missing
from the report of the Nigeria Custom Service data, pointing out the
irregularities in the collation of data, processing and testing its
validity. (www.trendsnafrica.com withholds the names of such companies
mentioned in the transparency report since it does not have any
method to check the veracity of the findings). The audit report of
the 2015 reveals that there is an unreconciled difference of about N74
billion, in comparison to the data declared by the government
agencies.
The main heads under which the discrepancies in the audited and
governmental data arise are payment of royalties, free on board (FOB)
value of the minerals exported, apart from very high incidences of
illegal mining. These are indicative of high incidence of under
invoicing in the export date to evade taxes and to realize higher
profits by selling through clandestine channels.
