Follow Us on Google
From Fred Itua, Abuja
There was a heated debate yesterday in the Senate between the Auditor – General for the Federation (AuGF), Aghughu Adolphus and Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, over alleged unremitted N4.06 trillion into the Federation Account.
This is even as the Senate Committee on Public Account probing the allegation, directed NNPC officials to come up with more detailed explanations on how they expended the money within the next seven days .
The Office of the AuGF, had in its 2016 audit report, accused the NNPC of non remittance of N4.076trillion into the Federation Account from operational proceeds between 2010 and 2016 .
An investigations into the matter by the Senate Committee on Public Account at its session, had Olutoye Agesin representing the AuGF in his capacity as Director of Public Accounts and Umar Ajiya, representing the NNPC GMD as Chief Finance Officer ( CFO).
Ajiya in his submissions before the committee, explained that the alleged unremitted N4.076 trillion was spent on other critical areas of operations which were not taken cognisance off by the Auditor General in the 2016 audit report. Agesin, however, countered saying the required explanations were not given for such spendings.
The NNPC CFO in debunking the allegation said the alleged unremitted money was expended on oil pipelines repairs , domestic fuel supplies which were heavily subsidised , security and management matters.
He said the response to the query had been sufficiently made in the forensic audit conducted later , reports of which were forwarded to the Office of the Auditor General and the committee .
“The forensic audit has been done, the Auditor General has a copy. At the end of the day that forensic audit established that NNPC was owing about N797billion, but also on the other hand, the federation was also owing NNPC, the net effect was that the NNPC was being owed N239billion , so there is nothing like N4trillion withheld by NNPC. The books are with the CBN, you can’t hide N4trillion anywhere. It has gone through the consumption of PMS and that is why everybody has to be involved with respect to deregulation,” he said.
However, Agesin in his counter submission said: “N4 trillion is not a small amount of money that can just be said to be spent on pipeline repairs and oil subsidy within five years. Line by line details of such spendings ought to have been made in the NNPC ‘s response to the query.”
Meanwhile, NNPC GMD, Kyari has said the monetary deductions made from the 2015 operations of the corporation had legal backing.
He gave the explanation while responding to the audit query from the AuGF over dwindling government revenue from 2014 to 2020 at the Public Accounts Committee,of the House of Representatives, yesterday.
“What we do is backed by the provisions of the law. First the NNPC Act is very clear that we should submit revenues net of our cost. There is also an informed decision of the Supreme Court and also the Attorney General of the Federation, that that position is correct and supported by the provisions of the law,” Kyari said.
Senators Ayo Akinyelure, Ibrahim Abdullahi and Suleiman Kwari supported the representative of the Auditor General by telling the NNPC CFO to give detailed accounts of how the money was spent .
Vice Chairman of the Committee , Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, directed the Chief Finance Officer of NNPC to furnish the committee with the required details within a week, upon which the query will be vacated or sustained. He therefore ruled that the query is stood down for a period of one week.
