Again, NNPC fails to remit $1.48bn into Federation Account

May 16, 2015 :

Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke

The Federation Accounts Allocation Committee on Friday raised the alarm that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has yet to remit $1.48bn into the Federation Account as directed by PriceWaterHouse Coopers in its forensic audit of the corporation.

PriceWaterHouse Coopers was last year hired to carry out the exercise following an allegation by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, that $20bn was not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC.

Sanusi, who is now the Emir of Kano, had written a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan that $49bn 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 later again changed the figure to $20bn.

PwC, in the report, had stated 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.

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

FAAC had at its last meeting constituted a committee to find out the reasons for the delay in making the funds available to the three tiers of government.

Barely had the committee swung into action than the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, stated that the NNPC had begun refunding the $1.48bn into the federation account as recommended by the audit firm. She said, “The PriceWaterHouse Coopers forensic audit that was done a few weeks ago, in its recommendation, mentioned that $1.48bn was owed by NPDC for a block that had hitherto been assigned from the NNPC to NPDC, which is its subsidiary.

“They felt that the right process would be that NPDC will refund that money to the Federation Account. NPDC has apparently started those refunds and it is also in discussion with NNPC and DPR on same. So the refund has actually begun.”

But the Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners of FAAC, Mr. Timothy Odaah, while speaking on the matter during an interview with journalists after this month’s allocation committee meeting, insisted that no amount had been transferred to the account.

He said, “The most important thing is for the public to know that we campaign and demanded for it because it is the money meant for the states and the federal government as well as the local governments.

“Entirely, it is the nation and Mr. President has directed that the money be paid to the federation account including the minister of petroleum but it is important to know that we have not seen anything.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Bashir Yuguda, on Friday said that N388bn was shared among the federal, states and local governments as statutory allocation for the month of April, 2015.

Yuguda announced this in Abuja when he addressed newsmen on the outcome of the end of this month’s FAAC meeting. He said, “The total revenue distributable for the month of April, including VAT of N75.1bn, is N388bn.”

Giving the breakdown of revenue among the three tiers of government, Yuguda said the Federal Government received N132.1bn, representing 52.68 per cent; while the 36 states got N67bn, representing 26.72 per cent. The local governments, he said, received N51.6bn, amounting to 20.60 per cent of the amount distributed.

He announced that N23.1bn representing 13 per cent derivation revenue was shared among the oil producing states.

On the constant lower revenue shared in the past months to, the minister said “frequent shut down and shut-in-trucks and pipelines at terminals continued to impact negatively on crude oil revenue.”

The minister advised the incoming administration to focus on the diversification of the economy, good governance and blocking of all revenue leakages to attain optimum service delivery