By SINL Nigeria
The office of the Auditor General of the Federation has queried the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to remit crude oil sales to the tune of N4.076trillion to the federation account.
This followed an audit query demanding an explanation from NNPC on why N4.706 trillion had remained unremitted contrary to constitutional provision.
Specifically, the query said “Remit all amounts due to the Federation Account, Improve on the record of remittance of proceeds to the Federation Account and pay interest on the amount unremitted”.
Indeed, the Senate Public Accounts Committee directed the corporation to give detailed explanation within one week before it could take a position on the query, when the NNPC appeared before it to answer an audit query by the Auditor General of the Federation on Tuesday.
Umar Ajiya, who represented the NNPC GMD argued that the query was raised without consideration for “subsidy, pipeline repairs, and management of domestic crude oil transactions”.
However, the committee was apparently not satisfied with the argument canvassed by the NNPC, saying “the corporation ought to help the committee on the raised questions by the office of the Auditor General of the federation”.
Meanwhile, the office of the Auditor General also aligned with the committee, stressing that “we expect to see the subsidy, what you spent on pipelines repairs etc”.
Earlier, a member of the committee, Senator Ayo Akinyelure (Ondo central) told the NNPC, “This answer is not adequate. There should be proper computation on how the figure was arrived at and we expect you (NNPC) to provide evidence to counter the query”.
