The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) withheld more than $16 billion of oil revenue from the Nigerian government in 2014, the Auditor-General of the Federation has disclosed.
The NNPC must, according to the constitution, hand over all oil revenues to the federal government. Money is then paid back based on the budget approved by parliament. In a report presented to the Nigerian National Assembly on Monday, Auditor-General Samuel Ukura said that other government ministries had also failed to remit funds, with the 2014 total at 3.3 trillion naira ($16.6 billion), Reuters reported.
NNPC is yet to make any explanation or reaction on what happened to the funds. It is not clear if this is another wild allegation similar to the one made by former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Sanusi had claimed that $20 billion in oil revenue was unaccounted for, leading former president Goodluck Jonathan to dismiss him.
NNPC denied the claim of the missing $20 billion.
The next month Jonathan ordered a forensic audit to be carried out on NNPC. This was carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which cleared NNPC of any wrongdoing in early 2015.
Former oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke and others were arrested in London in October last year. Many Nigerians had been expecting her arrest after President Muhammadu Buhari officially replaced Jonathan at the end of May.
Buhari, a former general, won the elections at the end of March last year after promising to crack down on corruption, which is endemic in Africa’s biggest economy.
He installed former ExxonMobil executive Ibe Kachikwu in a dual role as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and managing director of NNPC. Kachikwu recently announced that NNPC was to split into 30 separate entities.
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