March 15, 2022

The office of the Auditor General for the Federation (AuGF) has raised the alarm over missing N663 billion which it has asked the NNPC management to return to the federation account or face sanction.

This was part of six audit queries from the Auditor General for the Federation as contained in the Federal Government of Nigeria consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2019 submitted to the clerk to the National Assembly via a letter dated August 18, 2021 and signed by the Auditor General, Adolphus Aghughu. Money missing or unaccounted for has continued to define the operations of NNPC whose operations, from year to year, have been reported to be opaque.

The report pointed out discrepancies between the amount reported by the NNPC as transfer to the federations account and what was reported by the AuGF for the period.

Whereas NNPC records showed that N1,272,606,864,000.00 was transferred by the corporation, the amount recorded by the Accountant General for the federation was N608,710,292,773.44, showing a discrepancy of N663,896,567,227.58.

The AuGF said the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mele Kolo Kyari, should be asked to explain the discrepancy between the two figures and remit the balance of N663,896,567,227.58 to the federation account.

As at press time, NNPC was yet to explain how a hefty N663 billion was not remitted to the federation account.

The report also noted that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), now NNPC Limited, failed to account for about 107,239,436.00 barrels of crude oil lifted for domestic consumption in 2019.

The AuGF also said that available records from performance report of two depots revealed that about 22,929.84 litres of PMS valued at N7.06 billion pumped to the two depots (Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu) between June and July 2019 were not received by the depots.

The  AuGF report also said that the sum of N519,922,433,918.46 was transferred to the federation account by the NNPC based on transfer mandates, while demanding that the company provide “reconciliation statement for the difference of N88,787,862,853.96 between SGF’s figure of N608, 710, 296, 772.42 and NNPC’s figure per transfer mandate of N519,922,433,918.46”.

It said: “Audit observed that 107,239,436.00 barrels of crude oil were lifted as domestic crude, while allocation of crude oil to refineries for a billing date on January 9, to May 29, 2019 was 2,764,267.00 barrels valued at N55,891,009,960.63.”

“Information on the sale of un-utilised crude oil by refineries for 2019 was not provided, and information on crude oil allocations from May 30, to December 31, 2019, was not provided for scrutiny.”

The AuGF alleged possible diversion of domestic crude, diversion of sale of un-utilised crude as well as possible loss of federation account revenue, the report said the management of the NNPC failed to respond to the audit query earlier sent to it.

The AuGF said the Group Managing Director of NNPC should justify non-adherence to the transfer of all federation revenue to the federation account as provided by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and ensure that all revenue is paid into the federation account going forward.

The report continues: “the audit examination on ‘schedule of inflow of revenue’ by NNPC to federation account obtained from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation revealed that the domestic gas receipts of N4.572 billion was transferred to Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT)-gas in the month of January 2019, and was not made in the subsequent months of the year.

“This transfer reduced the amount due to Federation Account for the month of January, 2019 to the tune of N4.572 billion” leading to possible “reduction of distributable revenue in the Federation account, misapplication of fund and diversion of revenue”.