The Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, yesterday, disagreed with the Auditor-General of the Federation , Mr. Samuel Orkura over the the alleged N4.9 trillion which he claimed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, failed to remit to the Federation Account.
The commission said throuigh its spokesman, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, in Abuja, that the NNPC was owing only N1.9 trillion from the 2014 operations, going by its records.
He said in a statement “Following the Auditor General’s report that the “NNPC did not remit N3.2tr” in 2014, the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission has confirmed that the sum of N4.9tr was yet to be remitted into the Federation Account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC)”.
The Statement added that while the said report claimed that NNPC owed the sum of N3.2 Trillion to the Federation Account in 2014 from Domestic crude sale, the Commission’s records revealed that the Corporation owed the Federation Account the sum of N1.99 trillion only in 2014 from domestic crude sales. Therefore, the figure quoted by the Auditor-General of the Federation must have included revenues from other sources.
With regards to the alleged payment of US$235 million realised from the sale of Natural Gas into an undisclosed Escrow Accounts by the NNPC, the Commission explained that the NNPC on behalf of the NLNG had entered into agreements with three (3) International Oil Companies (IOCs) i.e. Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), Total E&P Nigeria Limited (TEPNG) under a Modified Carry Agreement (MCA) proceeds from which are deposited in Escrow Accounts for funding the various Gas projects under the LNNG. The total amount transferred to the various accounts from 2012 to November 2015 was $1.615 billion. The Commission, through the FAAC Post Mortem, has consistently requested the NNPC to provide it with updated financial statements on the projects but NNPC was yet to respond.
The Commission said it had been working with NNPC to reconcile the figures following a tripartite meeting held with the NNPC, Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) and RMAFC in December, 2015 where it was agreed that in view of the subsidy and other claims by NNPC, the Forensic Audit of the NNPC was very critical in establishing which party was actually indebted to the other. The Forensic Audit was expected to be concluded by the end of March, 2016.