- Excess Crude Account hits $1.803bn
The National Economic Council (NEC) has directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corpoling about N8 trillion (about $21 billion) and another N526 billion into the Federation account. ration (NNPC) and other revenue generating agencies to immediately refund un-remitted revenues total- NEC, which comprises governors of the 36 states of the Federation and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Minister of Finance is chaired by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
The decision of directing the NNPC and other revenue generating agencies of government to make the refund followed the adoption of an audit report by the KPMG between 2010 and 2015.
As a result of suspected cases of revenue leakages, NEC, in August 2015, had constituted an ad-hoc committee on remittances to carry out forensic audit and investigate some government agencies said to be in the habit of remitting dollar revenue in naira into the national treasury.
The ad-hoc committee was initially chaired by the former Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomole, who handed over to Dr. Ibrahim Dankwabo of Gombe. Briefing State House Correspondents after yesterday’s meeting, Damkwanbo said the NEC adopted the presentations and reports of the KPMG and the recommendations and resolved to identify instances where there appears to have been criminal infringements and forward such to the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Legal Committee of the NEC for further action.
He said Council also resolved to pursue the strengthening of the NNPC governance structure to prevent further recurrence of such gross under-remittance by the NNPC and other RGAs. Dankwambo said after receiving the KPMG audit report, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, recommended for the affected revenue generating agencies to refund the monies to government coffers.
“And the Finance Minister recommended refund of the amount underpaid,” he noted. Dankwabo, who was joined by the governor of Zamfara State and chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) Abdul’Aziz Yari; Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola and the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, said the organizations audited include Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). Dankwambo said the audit was for the revenue generating agencies that have paid into the Federation Account and those that paid for Federal Government agencies.
“We are talking about federation account because those that paid by law to Federal Government are the responsibility of the Federal Government. So, all the entities in the budget that are supposed to pay revenues into government coffers were checked from 2010 to June 2015.”
“One of the resolutions of NEC today is to extend the audit to June 2017. So, the audit will continue for the remaining agencies. It is NNOC, NPDC, DPR, Customs, Federal Internal Revenue Services, NPA, Maritime Authorities, all the revenue generating agencies and the details of the infringement that are contained in the report. Because it is a voluminous report, there are a lot of items that are there.
“The most important decision that was taken is that a sub-committee will be set up, which will be an arm of the legal committee of NEC that will look into details of these kinds of infringements and make sure that those issues that are criminal and require prosecution will be handled by office of the Attorney General of the Federation. In his remarks, Yari said that NEC also discussed the idea for states to determine how much is paid as subsi-dy by government and not NNPC.
He said: “Yes, the item was brought up for discussion, but it was referred back to the sub-committee on remittances in which I’m chair. We are doing the nittygritty with NNPC in terms of remittances.
“Don’t forget that the reason we got it right in 2016 on the NNPC side is because the oil prices were too low. It was easy for everyone to get fuel into the country and then make profit.
So, when the price started jacking up, then the marketers started adjusting back because they needed to have a template of cost recovery and how they are going to make up the difference from the pump price to the landing cost of what they are importing.
“Our problem is the volume, the quantity of consumption, which is not acceptable. Working with the governors, so many decisions were taken. But by next month, we are going to adopt that position either for the governors to take responsibility for the subsidy in their states based on the consumption, or we look at other ways.
“For instance, if you say we paid N800 billion subsidy, you will ask who are we paying the subsidy to? And if you look at infrastructure development and capital programme of the Federal Government, it is about N1.1 trillion, almost 70 per cent of what you are spending developing the economy. “If there is no infrastructure development, then you cannot talk about development of the economy.
N800 billion is a huge amount that we must look at it. Who is benefiting from it? So, we are coming up with a strategy, we are going to meet in the month of May and June. By next meeting, we will definitely come up with a position of the government at both level of the volume of what is being brought into the country and what the state and Federal Government collaborate to check,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, NEC also said that the current balance in the Natural Resources Development Fund as at May 14, 2018 stands at N116.104 billion. The balance in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) as at May 14, 2018 stands at $1.830billion.
