NNPC yet to remit $1.48bn into Federation Account –FG

Four Months after former President Goodluch Jonathan directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to refund $1.48bn (N291.56bn) into the Federation Account, the corporation has yet to do so.

An international audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, was last year hired to carry out a forensic audit of the corporation following an allegation by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, that $49bn was not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC.

Sanusi, who is now the Emir of Kano, had written a letter to Jonathan that the amount was not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC.

But following the controversy, which the letter generated, a committee was set up to reconcile the account.

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Sanusi later recanted and said the unremitted fund was $12bn. He again changed the figure to $20bn.

PwC had stated in its report that while the total gross revenues generated from crude oil lifting was $69.34bn between January 2012 and July 2013 and not $67bn as earlier stated by the Senate Reconciliation Committee, what was remitted to the Federation Account was $50.81bn and not $47bn.

Within the $69.34bn, the audit report revealed that $28.22bn was the value of the domestic crude oil allocated to the NNPC, adding that the total amount spent on subsidy for Premium Motor Spirit amounted to $5.32bn.

But speaking on Tuesday shortly after this month’s Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Anastacia Nwaobia, said no amount had been refunded as directed by Jonathan.

She said, “On refund from the NNPC, that was not discussed but you can see that from the breakdown, we have a refund of what we have been expecting from the NNPC to the Federal Government. We had a refund of about N6.33bn.

“The refund that you are asking about, maybe it is a fallout of the forensic audit; that has not been done. The forensic audit is still being considered and I am sure that when a decision is taken, it will be communicated and you will have that information.”

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