Yemisi Izuora
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has stepped up campaign to prompt the Federal Government to recover $22 billion, N316 billion from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Presenting its report in Abuja, Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio alleged that NNPC and its upstream arm, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) are yet to remit $21.778 billion and N316.074 billion into the federation account.
Adio explained that the funds were due from three main sources, which he listed as:
• federation assets divested to NPDC;
• the company’s legacy liabilities payment for domestic crude allocation to NNPC; and
• dividends from investment in Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG) paid to the NNPC.
According to Adio, the unremitted funds fall under the categories of the full payment for the 12 Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) divested from Shell and Agip Ventures as well as NNPC divestment of 55 per cent of its stake in the Shell JV valued at $1.8 billion by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
The audit also revealed that cash calls amounting to $552 million were erroneously paid on these divested assets by the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), the investment arm of NNPC.
The NPDC was said to have refunded $424 million to NAPIMS, but the money was not remitted to the Federation Account.
NEITI explained that the NPDC was yet to refund $148.278 million and N2.42 billion from the cash calls mistakenly paid to it.
It added that unremitted revenues in this category include arrears of liabilities of taxes, royalties and levies, leaving the amount owed by the NPDC at $5.531 billion and N72.435 billion.