How NNPC Short-changed FG Of N3trn In 7yrs – Reps Report
Findings by the House of Representative joint committees on finance, petroleum upstream, downstream and gas resources have revealed how the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) under-remitted N3. 098 trillion to the Federation Account between 2004 and 2011.
The report, whose copy was obtained by LEADERSHIP, also accused the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of conniving with the NNPC in effecting illegal deductions and payments.
The report also called for sanctions on the NNPC’s external auditors, Akintola Williams Deloitte and Muhtari Dangana & Co., as well as the Hart Group, consultants to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), for conspiring to overstate NNPC’s payments by N349 billion on domestic crude take in 2004, having stated the payment as N635 billion instead of N289 billion.
The joint house committee was set up to establish whether or not the NNPC was indebted to the nation to the tune of N450 billion. This became necessary after the corporation, which had earlier acknowledged the indebtedness to FAAC, later tagged same as “the alleged N450 billion indebtedness to FAAC” in its presentation dated October 2011 to the joint committee probing its remittances to the Federation Account.
But after subjecting NNPC group managing director, Engr. Austen Oniwon’s claims on the N450 billion debt to forensic analysis, they were found to be untrue. “The GMD’s claims were fraught with misrepresentations, falsehood, concealment and outright fraud,” the report noted.
It was discovered that Oniwon’s claims to subsidy of N134 billion in 2004 was false, as the NNPC’s audited account for 2004 did not disclose the liability of N134 billion as subsidy to it. Rather it was found that “in 2004, NNPC over-bloated the payments it made on domestic crude supplied by N349 billion. Instead of taking credit of total payments of N289 billion, NNPC credited itself with N638 billion.”
Already, intense pressure is being mounted on the committee leaders and members to compromise and water down the report. LEADERSHIP gathered that to avoid such pressure, two of the chairmen had to leave the country late last week, intending to return last Monday to lay the report before the House Tuesday - which they could not do because of the Dana crash.
There are indications also that the report may be presented to the House today or sometimes next week, even as there are allegations that some members of the joint committee are caving-in to the pressure and are thinking of presenting their own doctored version of the report.
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