Revealed: NNPC Audit Report Confirmed $18.5Billion Not Remitted – Sanusi Writes...

Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, has reacted to the auditors’ report on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s books. The former CBN governor, in an article titled “Unanswered questions on Nigeria’s missing oil revenue billions”, in the Financial Times, insisted that the PwC Audit Report confirmed that about $18.5 billion of the NNPC’s earnings was not remitted to the treasury, contrary to what the Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, claimed is the case. Below is what Sanusi wrote:

“Contrary to the claims of Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the audit report does not exonerate the NNPC. It establishes that the gap between the company’s oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bilion.”

Sanusi said the breakdown of the NNPC’s account of how it used that money, raises serious questions about the legality of the conduct of the state’s oil company. He said the only thing that is left to be done is for the authority to hold anyone found culpable in these transactions accountable and commence legal proceedings against them since, in his words, “Nigerians did not vote for an amnesty for anyone”.

“The lines of investigation suggested by this audit need to be pursued. Any officials found responsible for involvement in this apparent breach of trust must be charged.”

Giving details of what he described as a “scam that violated the constitution” and which he alleged  resulted in the siphoning of money from the treasury,” and by extension, his suspension as CBN governor, Sanusi said the perpetrators of the exercise relied on the supposed kerosene subsidy purportedly granted by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

“The auditors say a significant part of the unremitted funds is supposed to have gone towards a kerosene subsidy that had been stopped two and a half years earlier by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. His decree never appeared in the official gazette, leading some to question whether it ever had legal force. 

“Evidence disclosed in the report suggests this is a sideshow. The executive secretary of the agency charged with administering subsidies confirmed that, acting on Yar’Adua’s orders, it had ceased granting subsidies on kerosene. There was no appropriation for such a subsidy in the 2012 or 2013 budgets. 

“Nigerians paid N120-N140 a litre of kerosene, far more than the supposed subsidised price of N50, yet the state oil company withheld $3.4billion to pay for a subsidy that in effect did not exist”.

Notwithstanding the outcome of the PwC audit report, the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, has said he would revisit the missing $20billion.

Source: Vanguard