New Telegraph

N200bn scam: Senate orders NTA-Startimes Mgt team to vacate

The Senate, yesterday, ordered the management team of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and Startimes joint venture to step aside for a forensic audit of the accounts of the venture.

 

The apex legislative Chamber took the decision after three failed attempts to convince the Senate’s Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning of the transparency in the joint venture business, which was entered into in 2008.

 

Co-Chairman of the  Committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, declared that forensic audit of the account of the non- profitable venture to NTA, must be done to unravel the quantum of money that had been fraudulently taken out of the country within the last 11 years, estimated to be N200 billion.

 

He also described the affected management team in the joint venture as unpatriotic Nigerians, accusing them of working for Startimes but receiving monthly salaries from the NTA. They include: Maxwell Loko, who is the Managing Director of the joint venture; Tunde Aina, who serves as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Mr Emeka, who is the Director of Tax and Audit.

 

The joint Committee, interfacing with heads of government agencies on revenue projections for the N12.6trillion 2021 budget, had called on them one after the other, to explain why the joint venture had not yielded any profit for NTA as stated by the Director- General, Yakubu Ibn Mohammed, before the committee on Monday.

 

In his submission, the MD of the joint venture, Maxwell Loko, admitted that the business was not thriving because Digital Terestial Television ( DTT) being operated through the venture, was capital intensive as against the Satellite model. He lamented that out of the 4million subscribers Startimes had, only 20 per cent were active, which according to him, made the venture not profitable for both parties (NTA and Startimes).

 

However, Senator Adeola and other members of the joint Committee faulted his arguments based on records obtained from  the Audited Account reports submitted by both the NTA and the joint venture. Adeola particularly queried the MD on why proceeds of transactions from the joint venture were both in dollar and Naira as presented in the report of the audited accounts. “For example, as clearly stated in the Audited report before us , in 2018 alone, your revenue from subscription was $36.1million which is N11billion.

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