The House of Representatives has summoned the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mele Kyari; and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, over alleged non-remittance of N3.24tn revenue that accrued from sales of crude oil in 2014.
Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Wole Oke, issued the summons based on audit queries issued by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation for the period.
The committee had accused the NNPC GMD of refusing to respond to an audit query issued against the corporation over alleged illegal withdrawals from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited’s Dividends Account.
Newsmen recall that Kyari, who has yet to appear before the lawmakers on the NLNG matter, had denied the allegation.
The OAuGF, in its report for 2014, said from the examination of NNPC mandates to the CBN on Domestic Crude Oil Sales and Reconciliation in the Statement of Technical Committee of Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting held in January 2014, it showed that ‘a total sum of N3,234,577,666,791.35 was not remitted to the Federation Account by NNPC within the period under review.”
The query further read, “Cost estimated for crude and product losses was N55,964,682,158.99, which is about 50 per cent of pipeline management cost of N110,402,541,010.88. Names of contractors, location and amount paid to each for the pipeline maintenance were not sighted for audit verification.
“Over 31 per cent – N826,506,271,231.26 – divided by N2,636,390,514,777.18 multiply by 100 per cent – of the realised crude sales for the year were earmarked as other expenses, apart from direct cost of production stated in NNPC reports for the year 2014. The breakdown of other expenses was not provided for audit.
“From the above analysis, it means that the Federation Account is losing 31 per cent (N826,506,271,231.26) being additional estimated cost from the total amount that should have accrue to Federation Account.”
The auditor-general added, “From the total revenue of N3,234,577,666,791.35 as at 14th January, 2015, payable to the Federation Account by NNPC during the year, the corporation deducted the sum of N826,506,271,231.26, i.e. N660,139,048,061.39, N55,964,682,158.99 and N110,402,541,010.88, for subsidy estimate, crude and product losses and pipeline management cost, respectively, at source thereby resulting to the net amount withheld figure of N2,408,041,395,560.33 shown in the above table to the Federation Account.
“All these deductions at source by NNPC were not approved by FAAC.”
The OAuGF, therefore, requested the Accountant General of the Federation to inform the NNPC’s GMD to explain the flagrant withholding of domestic crude oil sales revenue by the corporation.
According to the auditor, there has been no positive response on similar issues raised in 2012.