The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has reported that some oil companies and ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) failed to remit over $8.3 billion into the Federation Account as required by extant financial regulations.
The Executive Secretary of organization, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji, made this disclosure in a detailed report on Nigeria’s extractive industry operations prepared for submission to the National Assembly or scrutiny and further action.
According to the report’s findings, while $74.386 billion was spent on fuel subsidies by successive federal governments since 2011, the sum of N16.25tn was lost to crude oil thefts, based on data collated and signed off by the operators and other stakeholders in the industry
Orji, while handing over the report to the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Bamidele Salami, during an interactive session in Abuja on Tuesday evening, elaborately spoke on the efforts made by the NEITI to get the report collated.
According to him, the extractive industry monitoring organization is currently working with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to make the defaulting entities and MDAs remit the funds into the Federation Account.
He clarified: “I have here, for instance, revenues we have earned from oil and gas since 1999. We also have here all the subsidy payments made. Since 2005 when it became a scandal, we began to collect the data. We began to ask questions on subsidy and as of 2021, the country had paid $74.386bn in subsidy.
“And we have a breakdown of what was paid each year. We have also got a conversion of what that can possibly translate to.
“In the course of this job, we have incentivized a lot of recoveries for the government because between what is paid and what was recovered, a lot of money in foreign exchange developed wings.
“Company A will say we paid $1m and you go to the account of the receiving agency and you find out that either half of that money was not received or more is received more than what was paid because of poor record keeping and carelessness”, the NEITI boss added.
While reading the summarized version of the NEITI’s report released on the 25th September to the lawmakers, Orji restated the commitment of the organization to cooperate with the Public Accounts Committee for the purposes of ensuring fiscal prudence and transparency in the extractive industries.
He further said: “In that report alone, over $8.3bn were unremitted funds on the part of some government agencies and companies. Our concern is that this is at a time when the government is going borrowing. So, we bring this information with incisive and empirical information and data with evidence and table it.
“We have also released the same report on the solid mineral sector and all the information and data are provided. On the 9th of November, we are releasing the last report for the year, which is on fiscal allocation and statutory disbursements”, the Executive Secretary added.
