Governor of Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi Tuesday revisited the issue of unremitted huge oil revenue by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) into the Federation’s coffers, insisting about $20 billion still stands unremitted.
This claim countered the NNPC’s position that it is only $10.9 billion that has not been accounted for.
Sanusi made the disclosure when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance, alongside key officials of the Finance Ministry and the NNPC.
The CBN boss had written President Goodluck Jonathan in October 2013, alleging that the NNPC had failed to remit about $48.9 billion oil revenue into the federation account.
Interestingly, few days later, Sanusi made a dramatic u-turn, saying it was only $10.9 billion that has not been remitted.
However, it was a surprise when the figure suddenly rose to $20 billion on Tuesday.
The public hearing on the missing fund was also attended by the members of the representatives of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI, CBN and NNPC officials.
Sanusi had insisted, “What must be agreed is that NNPC shipped $67 billion worth of crude, but what came to the CBN after all the reconciliation stands at $ 47 billion.
“NNPC must show where it got the authority to buy kerosene at N150 and sell at N40 and then put the burden of the loss of the federation account.
“We have provided evidence in the naira crude account out of the $28b dollar domestic crude shipped by the NNPC; it had repatriated $16b dollars. Out of the $67bn that has accrued to the NNPC account we have accounted for $47bn dollars.
“Out of the $67b dollars that the NNPC shipped, $47b dollars had been repatriated to the CBN. What we are talking about is the balance of the $20b dollars and what explanations had been given?”.
But the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, countered the CBN Governor’s claim, saying NNPC had done the necessary reconciliation of accounts with relevant agencies.
According to him, all the relevant agencies except CBN agreed that only $10.9b is yet to be reconciled.
Yakubu explained, “CBN is a banking outfit, so I really, really understand why they will not understand some petroleum engineering issues and they are not also an auditing outfit.
“Now what they try to do is to audit and I heard some statements made here that they do not have this document, they don’t have that document. They are not the auditors.
“We have certified bodies and arms of agencies that are charged with the responsibility of auditing. They are banking right? So what he said was not really new.
“We said clearly that we stated an amount that went to NPDC and that amount was the gross lifting. But there are other streams that go back to government in terms of taxes just like any other business player. So we have Royalties, we have Petroleum Profit Tax and so on and so forth.
“As you are aware the major chunk of the amount in question over 80 per cent of it is in the subsidy for both PMS and Kerosene.
“We said we are at the point of concluding the reconciliation. We have been reconciling with PPPRA, on the subsidy documentation on PMS and Kerosene. You were told the PPPRA testified to that. We are at the point of rounding up and that is the major chunk of the entire amount in question. As soon as that is done we will reconcile, sign-off and then make formal presentation to the committee”.
Prior to adjourning sitting, the Chairman, Committee on Finance, Ahmed Makarfi directed all the concerned agencies to return next week Thursday with all relevant documentary evidences on their submissions.
