Obono-Obla: Oil companies contributing to Nigeria’s economic woes

Okoi Obono-Obla, chairman, special presidential investigation panel for recovery of public property, says oil companies are contributing to Nigeria’s economic woes.

Obono-Obla made the remark on Monday during a press briefing where he spoke on recent activities of the panel.

According to him, some of the international oil companies (IOCs) have not paid income taxes or royalties on oil blocs they’ve been operating on.

He said Exxon Mobil Nigeria had only paid $600 million out of $2.5 billion from an oil bloc acquired in 2009.

He said the panel is working with the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) to draft a report which “proves” that Addax Petroleum had not paid company income tax of N700 million in the last six years.

“A lot of oil companies are contributing to the economic adversity of Nigeria by denying Nigeria tax revenues and royalties that would have helped the government develop infrastructures in Nigeria,” he said.

“We are investigating some of these companies for tax evasion, failure to pay royalties. Five oil companies have not remitted over 1 billion dollars to government.

“We will get to the root of the matter.”

Obono-Obla also spoke on how Sambo Dasuki, former national security adviser, withdrew $20 million from an account reportedly belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

“In one of the accounts, we found about $3 billion belonging to a purported NNPC account. We also noticed a withdrawal of $20 million on the 29th of June 2015 from one of the accounts. The money was withdrawn by National Security Adviser (NSA) (office of the NSA),” he said.

Obono-Obla said the panel had collaborated with the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to probe further into the issue of the Panama Papers, with specific focus on businessmen with properties offshore and tax evaders.