ABUJA: The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance data and information sharing aimed at improving remittances to the Fund and promoting greater transparency in the extractive sector.
At the signing ceremony held Monday in Abuja, TETFund Executive Secretary, Arc. Sonny Echono, said the partnership would deepen accountability, particularly within the oil, gas, and other extractive industries, while aligning with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu.
“This will ensure accountability, particularly in the oil and gas and other extractive industry sector, ensure that taxes that are due to be remitted to the education tax fund are made and even those that fail to pay are recovered, to boost revenue, to ensure that we are able to fulfill the purpose of Mr. President, of restoring our institutions in the shortest possible time.
“And being able to having a framework that will enable us to get accurate, up-to-date data on what these should be, is something we have been working very hard on and it will culminate into a very firm agreement between the two agencies today,” Echono said.
The Executive Secretary explained that TETFund is not only focused on prudent expenditure but also on expanding and improving its revenue collection framework.
“But we also ensuring how do we generate, how do we expand the incidents, how do we improve the efficiency of collection of revenue,” he said.
He noted that the establishment of a dedicated Department of Revenue and Investment, approved by TETFund’s Board of Trustees, has significantly enhanced revenue performance.
“That has also been one of the reasons why you are seeing very significant improvements in revenue because all across our zonal offices, we have officers located there now who are working with the Federal Inland Revenue Service and their staff deployed in their zonal offices to basically go to every entity that is supposed to be paying tax for the companies registered and eligible to pay tax.
“Confirming if they are paying, verifying whether they are paying the right amount and so on. But there are some that are more difficult, more complicated, like these organisations that are offshore,” he said.
