The
National Economic Council chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday set
up a four-member committee to scrutinise the accounts of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation and the Excess Crude Account managed by the last
administration.
The probe
was meant to unravel N3.8trillion not remitted to the Federation Account by the
NNPC between 2012 and May 2015 as well as $2.1bn said to have been deducted
from the ECA without approval.
Zamfara
State Governor, Abdulazeez Yari; Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State;
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State; and Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa
Ibom State briefed State House correspondents at the end of the 58th meeting of
the council held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Yari said
through a briefing by the Director of Funds, Office of the Accountant-General
of the Federation, Mr. M.K. Dikwa, council members got the report of the ECA
and unremitted funds by NNPC.
He said,
“On that line, a four-man committee consisting of the governors of Edo, Gombe,
Kaduna and Akwa Ibom State was constituted to go through the books of NNPC and
Excess Crude as well as the Federation Account.
”The
four-man committee will check the books of NNPC, most especially the issue of
excess crude and what is not remitted into the Federation Account. The FG,
in conjunction with the CBN, will look inwards to see how to support, how much
they will give to states especially on the issue of outstanding salaries owed
by the states and even the Federal Government.”
Explaining
further, Oshiomhole said the meeting was the first time that the NNPC and
the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation were compelled to
provide information on issues concerning the total sales of Nigeria’s crude
from 2012 to May 2015, saying that has never happened before.
He said
presentations revealed that although NNPC claimed it earned N8.1trillion
between 2012 and May 2015, the corporation only paid N4.3trillion into the
Federation Account.
The
governor said, “We are talking about transparency; we are talking about change.
And what we saw from those numbers which I believe that Nigerians are entitled
to know, is that whereas the NNPC claimed to have earned N8.1 trillion, what
NNPC paid into the Federation Account from 2012 to May 2015 was N4.3 trillion.
“What it
means is that NNPC withheld and spent N3.8 trillion.
“The
major revelation here is that the entire federation, that is the Federal
Government, the states and all the 774 local governments, the amount the NNPC
paid into the Federation Account for distribution to these three tiers of
government came to N4.3 trillion and NNPC alone took and spent N3.8 trillion.
“This
means that the cost of running NNPC is much more than the cost of running the
Federal Government. That tells you how much is missing, what is mismanaged and
what is stolen. There are huge figures.”
The
governor said the basic law was that one does not sell and spend.
He said there
was no enterprise manager who goes to the market, sells and just begin to
spend, otherwise nobody needs to budget.
Oshiomhole said
the only lawful way decreed by the Constitution was that if NNPC needed to spend
money, it is obliged to prepare its budget like every other business
enterprise, get it scrutinised by the executive and then forwarded to the
National Assembly which will appropriate on it accordingly.
He wondered that
if the Federal Government could not spend without appropriation, why should any
agency of government do that.
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