Joe Johnson
The Nigerian Senate has uncovered an alleged multi-billion Naira fraud in the Joint Venture operations between State-owned television, the Nigerian Television Authority(NTA) and a Chinese Satellite Pay TV, StarTime.
The allegation emerges as Senate through its Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning which is currently considering the details of the
2021-2023 MTEF & FSP documents; scrutinizes the spending and expenditure of the Nigerian Television Authority for 2021.
The Senate Panel is shocked to find out that the multi-billion naira deal with StarTime was not included anywhere in the documents submitted to it and presented by the Director-General, Mallam Mohammed Yakubu.
Trouble started for NTA after the Chairman of the Senate Panel, Solomon Olamilekan asked why NTA was blocking StarTime from being registered with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC).
In response, Yakubu denied the allegation; stressing that NTA couldn’t have blocked StarTime as it was currently in a Joint Venture Agreement with company.
The DG’s statement was enough however to prompt further questions from the Senate Panel; askin to know how much NTA had earned from the JV with StarTime over the years.
But even more curious to the Senate Panel was that the JV was not stated anywhere in the documents NTA submitted for Senate perusal.
The Senate Panel had grown quite suspicious at this point; demanding to see records of what NTA generates from production, adverts and documentaries.
It also asked that NTA should return on Monday with its debt profile containing the names of its debtors, the date, amount incurred as well as the name of the official who authorized it for publication.
The NTA entered the Joint Venture with StarTime in 2010 with a sharing ratio of 70-30 in favour of the Beijing based company.
Irked by NTA’s outing; the Senate Panel ordered that henceforth all revenue generating agencies of government should remit all their earnings into the Consolidated Revenue Funds out of which their cost of collection will be given to them.
The panel believed that this arrangement will not only shore up revenue for government but also block wastages in the system.