The House of Representatives has uncovered fraud perpetrated dring the time of the defunct Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, alleging that some subsidiaries of trhe NNPC do iciled abroad buy crude oil and gas without evidence of payment for the purchases.
According to the House ad-hoc committee many of the fraudulent acts were perpetrated before the NNPC metamorphosed into Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
The ad hoc committee was to determine the assets and liabilities of the NNPC before it was fully privatised as prescribed by the Petroleum Industry Act.
The report of the ad-hoc committee stated that available information showed that the NNPC assets were stated at “historical cost and written-down values,” while some subsidiaries of the NNPC, with locations in foreign countries, buy crude oil and gas from NNPC “without evidence of their payments for the purchases.”
It added, “These companies are indicted to be operating without employees and no fixed assets; yet over N30bn is traceable to some of them;
According to its findings, the committee noted that the NNPC was alleged to have over 25 subsidiaries, whose profits, assets, and liabilities were transmissible to NNPC Ltd, “but the NNPC only transmitted records of only 21 subsidiaries.”
The committee noted that the NNPC, in its latest Group Audited Financial Statements, reported total assets of N15.84tn for 2020 and N16.2tn for 2021.
“However, in direct contrast to that position, NAPIMS alone, in its audited account for 2020 reported N21.04tn,” it stated.
According to it, NAPIMS has total assets of N4.84tn more than NNPCL, which it claimed was a mystery that needed to be unravelled.
The report partly read, “The issue of subsidy/under-recovery that has bedevilled the nation over the years seems to have reared its ugly head in our findings. There is evidence that the subsidy/under-recovery cost is being overestimated. The same costs seem to be charged against the federation in the audited accounts of both NNPC and NAPIMS.
“Nigerian publications on the 3rd of January 2022, pointed to the fact that NNPC is asking the Federal Government to pay additional $1.5bn to five IOCs as outstanding cash-call balance. This is additional liability about to be passed on to NNPC Ltd.
“However, our findings show that as a matter of fact, the federation has actually paid the liabilities of over $2bn through President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive; found a liability of over N2tn that NNPC Ltd is about inheriting on behalf of the federation. No reasonable basis has been established for this liability which is associated with Nigeria Agip Oil Company.”
“Standard Chartered Bank is closing all its Nigerian branches and the nation has so much to worry about, considering the huge funds warehoused therein in the names of NAPIMS and NNPC.”
According to the committee, 80 companies supposedly owe the sum of $5.76bn on royalties, $1.0bn on gas flare penalty, while concession rental is $13.173m and royalty on gas is $409.58m, with royalty on gas in naira, N39.82bn.
“Hence, the recommendation is to recover the above debts and transmit to NNPC Ltd or confiscation of assets value of the debt from the debtors and transfer to NNPC Ltd,” the panel declared.
