The House of Representatives has summoned minister of petroleum resources Diezani Allison-Madueke as well as past chairmen and members of the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to explain their part in the non-remittance of over N4 trillion by various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in 2009 as contained in reports by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF).
The state-run oil corporation was indicted along with 60 MDAs in the soon-to-be-tendered report of the Solomon Olamilekan-Adeola-led House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The 399-page AGF’s audit report on the federation account for the year ended December 31, 2009, was adopted as a working document for the House Committee on Public Accounts.
The PAC chairman disclosed that the committee would soon lay the 1, 200-page report on the investigation of the 2003-2009 AGF’s report before the House.
Also, the management of the NNPC is expected to appear before PAC for seven consecutive days to explain $7 billion revenue shortfalls recorded in 2006. The PAC chairman told newsmen that the shortfall represented the corporation’s un-remitted revenue to the federation account for the said year.
Adeola said the queries have also been extended to the DPR, PPMC, PPPRA and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources on the matter.
The PAC is equally probing the operation of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The committee disclosed that LNG has not remitted revenue into government coffers for seven years.
He said: “On the issue of LNG, you will agree that the only thing that constitutes revenue today aside taxes is oil. There is nowhere in the budget where it is stated that revenue from gas.
“That is why this committee (PAC) has invited them to give us their revenue profile.
As per the $7 billion revenue shortfall from the NNPC, Adeola said, “ NNPC has been invited by this committee to spend seven days with the committee.
“As a committee, we have asked the NNPC to appear, the DPR, the PPPRA which is in charge of subsidy, PPMC and the supervising ministry itself. We have asked them to appear. They have been avoiding us, but we can assure you they must surely come.”
The AGF report for 2009 obtained by LEADERSHIP shows that the Consolidated Revenue Account recorded a shortfall of N254,157,683,917.45; shortfall of N267,674,270,493.54 shortfall in the external loan out of N582,621,480,000 obtained by fund departments while $200 million transfer from JP Morgan was omitted from the Consolidated Account as at 13th August 2009.
The report further stated that N214,826,243,694 accrued into sinking fund, interest due on floatation of bonds, among others, were unknown while N524,372,523,275.79 extracted balances on capital accounts of 185 MDAs “had not been remitted into the Consolidated Revenue Fund as at the time of this report (December 2009).
An analysis of the queries showed that the sum of N109,449,999,997 was paid from Consolidate Revenue Fund accounts into retirement benefit bond redemption fund from 2006 to 2009 without evidence of investments as provided in Section 29(1) of the 2004 Pension Reform Act, which requires CBN to establish, invest and manage the fund.
Also, 93 out of 108 MDAs also failed to disclose the nature of accounts with closing balances totalling N422,374,981,449.18 in 2009 fiscal year, while the sum of N22,941,514,567 being ‘cash held from external loans’ had no comparative figure.
The auditor-general also queried non-repayment of the sum of N306,538,058,709.32, out of which N149,965,780,369 loans and cumulative interests for the 2009 fiscal year owed by 18 government-owed companies; N7,291,336,930.09 principal loans and N1,096,183,863 cumulative interests owed by Federal Housing Authority (FHA) since 2002 as well as anomalies surrounding the share certificate from Bank of Industry which covers additional N4 billion investment equity by federal government.
The report also reveals the illegal “movement” of N85,553,957,514.57 unreported in various bank statements including N37 billion being 1.68 per cent development of natural resources; N7.6 billion being 7 per cent port levy and N15.7 billion being CISS levy.
These include underpayment of N1.2 billion VAT in the 2009 audit report; N13.7 billion from ecological fund; N67.8 million from prototype housing units and additional sum of N679.4 million from Federal Government Staff Housing loan scheme.
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