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Chairman of the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics (AERE), Dele Kelvin Oye, has called for an independent examination of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s (NNPC) N11.201 trillion receivables from the Federation, demanding full disclosure of the actual cost of securing Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure.
Oye said the figure, contained in NNPC’s 2025 annual financial statements, raised fundamental questions about transparency in the management of petroleum revenues, particularly the distinction between expenditure on physical asset security, government advances and other financial obligations.
He warned against interpreting the N11.2 trillion as the amount spent on pipeline surveillance and security operations in 2025, explaining that it represented an outstanding year-end balance comprising different categories of transactions.
In a policy analysis titled, “The N11.2 Trillion Bodyguard: A Receivable in a Security Uniform,” Oye noted that NNPC’s receivables from the Federation increased from N8.840 trillion in 2024 to N11.201 trillion at the end of December 2025.
He argued that the company’s published accounts did not provide sufficient details to enable Nigerians to determine precisely how much of the balance related to physical security, advances to the Federal Government or other obligations arising from petroleum operations.
“The N11.2 trillion bodyguard is not a 2025 security bill. This is the correction that matters most. The N11.201 trillion figure in NNPC’s 2025 accounts is not N11.2 trillion spent on guards, drones or pipeline patrols during the year. It is the year-end balance of ‘other receivables from the Federation’,” he said.
According to him, the broad description of the receivables as advances to the Federation and costs incurred in protecting oil and gas assets under a government-approved framework made detailed reconciliation necessary.
He disclosed that NNPC’s accounts recorded no energy-security expense for 2025 under the relevant financial statement note, although an opening energy-security receivable of N8.672 trillion, carried forward from 2024, was reconciled in September 2025.
The reconciliation, he explained, involved offsetting the outstanding amount against royalties, taxes and dividends due to the Federation as of December 2024, contributing to a reduction in the total Federation receivable balance from N17.512 trillion to N11.201 trillion.
“That does not end the transparency question; it finally starts it properly. A receivable from the Federation is not an invoice from a private customer.
It sits at the intersection of public finance, petroleum operations and sovereign authority. When the label is broad, scrutiny must become narrow,” Oye stated.
The AERE chairman consequently demanded a publicly accessible reconciliation of the transactions, with separate disclosures for physical oil and gas asset security, supplier-of-last-resort and petrol price-under-recovery obligations, and advances to the Federation.
He said each category should identify the legal authority for the expenditure, beneficiaries, supporting invoices, payment status, amounts offset against government obligations and measurable results.
“Nigeria should therefore insist on a three-column public reconciliation: physical asset security; supplier-of-last-resort/price-under-recovery support; and advances to the Federation. Each column should show the legal authority, beneficiary, invoice, cash status, offset status and measurable result.”
Oye explained that the energy-security classification historically covered more than pipeline protection, including obligations arising from NNPC’s supplier-of-last-resort role under the Petroleum Industry Act framework.
He noted that during the regulated petrol pricing period, under-recovery represented the difference between the landing cost of imported petrol and the regulated selling price.
Although exchange-rate movements could affect the difference, he cautioned that the 2025 report did not separately quantify a foreign-exchange component.
Turning to NNPC’s financial performance, Oye acknowledged that the company reported a profit after tax of N7.183 trillion in 2025, compared with N5.414 trillion in 2024, alongside peak crude oil and condensate production of 1.77 million barrels per day and a declared dividend of N5.8 trillion.
He described the figures as significant achievements but argued that they required closer scrutiny because the company’s revenue and gross profit declined during the same period.
“The numbers deserve applause before they receive interrogation. NNPC Limited reported a 2025 profit after tax of N7.183 trillion, up from N5.414 trillion in 2024. It reported peak crude-and-condensate production of 1.77 million barrels per day, its highest level in five years, and declared a N5.8 trillion dividend.
“Those are substantial reported achievements. The question is not whether Nigeria should notice them. It should. The question is whether Nigerians can see, line by line, how value is being made, owed, settled and delivered.”
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Oye observed that revenue declined by 24 per cent to N34.517 trillion, while gross profit fell by approximately 20 per cent to N9.374 trillion, despite the increase in profit after tax.
He attributed part of the difference to movements in other income and impairment provisions disclosed in the financial statements.
According to him, other income increased from N3.392 trillion to N8.416 trillion, while the impairment position shifted from a N753.557 billion charge in 2024 to a N325.432 billion reversal in 2025.
He said NNPC attributed part of its sundry income to Trans-Forcados pipeline operations, crude-processing fees, miscellaneous income from joint venture operators and a write-back relating to an Amenam-Kpono stock-overlift claim.
“None of that makes the profit unreal. But it does make the simple victory dance incomplete. When a company’s profit grows while core revenue and gross profit retreat, citizens deserve to know which cash-generating operations did the lifting, which accounting estimates moved, and which one-off items may not return for an encore,” he said.
The AERE chairman also questioned the sharp reduction in the financial statement line designated for pipeline maintenance, which fell from N149.478 billion in 2024 to N13.813 billion in 2025, representing a decline of approximately 90.76 per cent.
He, however, cautioned against concluding that the reduction necessarily meant that physical maintenance of petroleum infrastructure had collapsed.
Oye explained that the same financial statements showed other direct costs increasing from N566.540 billion to N1.277 trillion, a category which NNPC said included the maintenance and operation of wells, production facilities, pipelines, processing infrastructure, integrity management, repairs and field support.
“So the accounts do not prove that physical maintenance collapsed by 90%. They prove that the public cannot tell, from the published categories, whether work was postponed, reclassified, embedded in another cost centre or carried out more efficiently.
“That distinction is not a footnote; it is the governance issue,” he stated.
He urged NNPC to publish an asset-integrity scorecard for each major petroleum trunk line, detailing planned and completed maintenance, incidents, downtime, expenditure and independent inspection findings.
“A pipeline is not a metaphor. It either holds pressure or it holds a press conference,” he added.
Oye maintained that transparent accounting should extend beyond financial disclosures to measurable operational performance, including evidence that expenditure on petroleum infrastructure had produced the intended results.
He also called for greater clarity on future oil-delivery commitments and obligations arising from forward-sale arrangements, arguing that the public needed a clear account of commitments affecting future petroleum revenues.
The AERE chairman stressed that his intervention was not intended to dismiss NNPC’s reported financial achievements but to ensure that its accounts provided sufficient information for independent scrutiny.
“NNPC’s 2025 accounts contain real achievements: stronger reported profit, improved production and a notable dividend declaration. They also show a financial architecture in which major public questions can still hide inside broad labels, offsets and future-delivery obligations,” he said.
He insisted that the N11.2 trillion figure was not evidence of equivalent security spending in 2025 but a substantial receivable whose composition required detailed public disclosure.
“The maintenance line does not prove that pipeline upkeep disappeared, but it does expose a reporting structure too opaque for a strategic national asset.”
Oye concluded that Nigeria needed a more accountable system for documenting petroleum transactions, settling obligations and measuring the performance of strategic national assets.
“Nigeria does not need another acronym, another relaunch or another headline with a ribbon around it. It needs a receipt: names, dates, invoices, barrels, offsets, performance and cash,” he declared.
