The Federal Government of Nigeria on Tuesday, June 23, 2015 announced that the sum of $1.48bn (N291.56 billion) was yet to be remitted to the Federation Account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Disclosing this to newsmen at the Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting was the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance , Mrs. Anastacia Nwaobia.
She posited thus: “On refund from the NNPC, that was not discussed but you can see that from the breakdown, we have a refund of what we have been expecting from the NNPC to the Federal Government.
“We had a refund of about N6.33bn.
“The refund that you are asking about, maybe it is a fallout of the forensic audit; that has bot been done.
“The forensic audit is still being considered and i am sure that when a decision is taken, it will be communicated and you will have that information.”
An International audit outfit, PricewaterhouseCoopers, had been contracted by the past administration to carry out a thorough forensic audit of the corporation following an allegation by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamid Sanusi, that $49bn was not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC.
The incumbent Emir of Kano had written a letter to Jonathan that the NNPC had failed to remit the amount into the Federation Account.
However, due to the controversy the issue degenerated into a committee was commissioned to reconcile the account.
Later on, Sanusi recanted, stating that the amount not remitted was $12bn.
Again the figured was changed by him, saying the unremitted amount was now $20bn.
PwC revealed in its report that while the total gross revenues generated from crude oil lifting was $69.34bn between January 2012 and July 2013 and not $67bn as was stated earlier by the Senate Reconciliation Committee, what was remitted to the Federation Account was $50.81bn not $47bn as earlier stated.
The audit report also disclosed that $28.22bn out of the $69.34bn was the value of the domestic crude oil allocated to the NNPC, while mentioning that the total amount spent on subsidy for Premium Motor Spirit amounted to $5.32bn
The Permanent Secretary of the Finance Minsitry, Mrs Nwaobia also disclosed that the sum of N418.4bn was shared among the federal, states and local governments as revenue for the month of may.
She explained that the shared monies comprised of the month’s statutory revenue of N324bn and N6.3bn refunded by NNPC, being the coporation’s debt to the federation before the release of the forensic audit report.
“The gross revenue of N324.06bn received for the month was higher than the N282.06bn received in the prvious month by N41.99bn.
“The distributable statutory revenue for the month is N324.06bn.
“The sum of N6.33bn was refunded by the NNPC to the Federal Government.
“Also, there was an exchange gain of N31.24bn, which is proposed for distribution.
“The total revenue distributable for the current month, including VAT is N418.4bn,” She said.
She then fianlly mentioned that N29bn which represents 13 per cent derivation revenue was also shared among the oil producing states.
