State Governments in the country have maintained their position over the discrepancies in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) report to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting last Wednesday, insisting that the corporation must remit N20 billion to the account.
The position of the governments was canvassed at the weekend by the finance commissioners following the abruption of the FAAC meeting midweek due to the irregularities in the state-owned oil company’s revenue report presented to the committee.
The Chairman of the Finance Commissioners Forum, Mr. Mamood Yunusa, on Saturday in Abuja said that the NNPC must pay fully the difference in its actual collections and amount it presented as remittance at the meeting.
He explained: “Based on all provable assumption parameters, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is to remit N60 billion as royalty based on the verbal admission of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
“And based on the MTEF submitted by NNPC, the Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) expected was to be 1.46 multiplied by 60 billion amounting to N87.6 billion. The sum of PPT and royalty originally expected in the federation account is N147 as against the N127 billion paid by NNPC”, Yunusa added.
Making further clarifications on the corporation’s remittance to the account, Yunusa said that it remitted N127 billion as May earnings instead of N147 billion, leaving a shortfall of N20 billion.
According to the commissioner, the corporation also “claimed it spent N3.5 billion on product leakages, pipeline vandalism, but the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) an agency that is supposed to keep such record claimed ignorance of the amount”
He queried why FAAC got more revenue from NNPC when crude oil was N50/barrel from the corporation as against the low remittance it was getting now when crude oil is selling at almost N80/barrel at the international market.
The Chairman of the Finance Commissioners Forum pointed out that “equal stakeholders in the business, NNPC owes it a duty to Nigerians in the spirit of openness and transparency and by the Act that established it to be open and transparent to all stakeholders.
“States, as stakeholders in the federation account, are not expected to take NNPC’s account hook, line and sinker but are allowed by law to ask questions for clarity”, Yunusa added.
