Senate committee says $49.8bn not missing

The senate joint committee on finance has said $49.8bn is not missing from the federation account.

Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now suspended, had alleged in a widely circulated letter to the president last year that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was yet to account for that amount.

A member of the senate committee, Senator Bukola Saraki, has however denied that the report cleared the NNPC of wrongdoing.

The report of the committee, which investigated the allegation by Sanusi, was signed by the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ahmed Makarfi, and nine other members.

According to the report, the total crude oil lifting between January 2012 and July 2013 was $67bn and not $65bn as the CBN governor had presented.

The committee stated that the CBN, NNPC, ministry of finance and the ministry of petroleum resources had agreed after reconciliation that the sum of $47bn out of the $67bn had been credited to the federation account.

“The problem of non-remittance of revenues by the NNPC was not new and it was not the CBN that first disclosed it.

“The committee could not see how the figure of 49.8 billion dollars was arrived at by the CBN governor in the first instance,” it said.

The committee  recommended for the complete discontinuation of the fuel subsidy regime in the country.

It also recommended that NNPC should refund to the federation account $218,069,354.32 being the balance of the gross lifting under the third party financing.

The committee also recommended that inter-agencies reconciliation meetings between institutions such as the ministry of finance, NNPC, CBN and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) should be done on regular basis.

It said such regular meetings among those sensitive economic institutions would prevent a recurrence of this situation and ensure that all revenues were properly and legally accounted for.

It urged the senate  to accept the  N813.8bn subsidy deductions by the NNPC from January 2012 to July 2013, since it was certified by the PPPRA and appropriated for by the national assembly.

The committee asked the senate to accept the subsidy deducted by NNPC in the sum of N180bn for the fourth quarter of 2011 which was also certified by the PPPRA and appropriated by the national assembly.

The committee noted that no proposal was made in the 2014 appropriation bill for subsidy on kerosene, adding that the subsidy on PMS is inadequate.

Also, the committee advised that NNPC should henceforth not pay their operational expenditures direct from the federation fund without appropriation by the national assembly.

It stressed that the oil corporation should strictly adhere to international best practice in keeping records.

It cautioned that  NNPC should not control the revenue account of Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) so as not to undermine its separate legal status and make accountability more difficult.

The committee further advised the NNPC to ensure due process and diligence in its operations, and urged the senate to urgently pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) into law so as avoid the mistakes of the past.

Meanwhile, Saraki has asked Nigerians to wait for the full report but did not give details of the areas he believed were wrongly reported.

He wrote on his facebook: “The recent media reports claiming that the Senate Committee on Finance has cleared NNPC of any unaccounted revenue fund is not true.

“Though I could not attend the last meeting of the committee, I have been very active in the investigation, nothing significant has changed to suggest clearing anybody.

“I can say on behalf of the Committee that these media reports bear no correlation to the content of the Senate Committee report and I would urge the public to disregard it in its entirety.

“The Committee is yet to receive the report on the forensic audit and independent analysis on the subject clearly indicate we have a lot of grounds to cover in order to determine the level of culpability or otherwise of agency on the alleged non-committal, so to suggest any clearance for anybody at this stage is out of the question.

“I will further advise that the media should wait for the senate to release the details of the Committee report to the public before they jump into spurious conclusions.”