It was confusion on Monday at the Adhoc Committee investigating the $17 billion stolen crude oil and Liquified Natural Gas to foreign destination, on Monday as the committee uncovered the sum $15 billion‎ unremitted revenue into Federation Account.
This is coming just as Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) disclosed that Nigeria may have lost more than $39 billion as undeclared sale of 359,916 million barrels of crude oil between 2011 and 2014.
The confusion in the investigation came as a result of two separate documents submitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Committee.
Also, NEITI’s Executive Secretary, Waziri Adio pleaded with the committee to withdraw the submission the agency earlier made to the Committee, saying that there was big mathematical error in figures arrived at in the document submitted to the committee.
When the agency was asked if it was under pressure from powerful quarters to change its report, he said that the new information from key actors showed that the figures in the report were misleading because they were supposed to be more.
The NEITI boss who had accused the NNPC and CBN of misleading the Adhoc Committee pleaded to withdraw the earlier documents submitted, and promised that he would submit documents that will help in unearthing the unremitted revenue accrued from oil and gas.‎
However, responding to questions from members of the Adhoc Committee, NNPC’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Rabiu Bello,‎ admitted that there were errors in the documents before the Adhoc Committee.
Also at the hearing, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) failed to explain how $7 billion out of $42.7 billion proceeds of crude oil sale between 2010 and 2014 was made available to the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) for sharing among the tiers of government during the period.
In his earlier presentation, CBN Director, Jack Ukitetu, who represented the CBN Governor, explained that the Accountant General of the Federation approves and determines the money accrued into the Excess‎ Crude Account.
In his presentation, he explained that before 2006, the CBN collected the money on behalf of government’s agencies and remit into the Federal Reserve Account in New York and charged 0.25 percent, however noted that after 2006, the oil companies pay directly what is due to the government.
The chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas,‎ who spoke earlier had threatened that the Ad-hoc Committee will not hesitate to submit its report to the House without the inputs of major Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which fail to honour the invitation of the committee.
The Adhoc Committee mandated the apex bank and NNPC to submit the audited report of the oil and gas account showing the remitted funds into the Federation Account between 2011 and 2014.
The Corporation was also mandated to submit Bill of Laden relating to the 974,721 barrels of crude oil lifted on 20th October 2011; 961,963 barrels lifted on the 10th October 2011; 974,935 barrels of crude oil lifted on the 9th July 2011 as well as 974,953 barrels of crude oil lifted on the 18th July 2011 but were not declared.
The lawmakers also requested for report of the reconciliation conducted by NNPC and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) as well as the list of oil off-takers for 2013 and 2014.
Also, the Corporation is expected to provide details of the companies that paid oil tax between 2011 and 2014, as well as the Letter of Credits (LCs) of all the monies paid into the Federation Account within the period under review.
and then