"Deziani you Lied, PwC Didn’t Exonerate NNPC" Sanusi Insists $12.5B Diverted From Crude Sale

 

In an essay titled in the Financial Times, the Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi insists that the PwC Audit Report confirmed that about $18.5billion of the earnings of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was not remitted to the treasury.

According to Sanusi, Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

In the article, Sanusi wrote: “Contrary to the claims of Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the audit report does not exonerate the NNPC. It establishes that the gap between the company’s oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bilion.”

Sanusi stated that serious questions of legality of the conduct of NNP were raised in the breakdown of the NNPC’s account of how it used that money. He advised the authority to hold anyone found culpable in these transactions accountable and begin legal proceedings against them since “Nigerians did not vote for an amnesty for anyone”. 

He said: “The lines of investigation suggested by this audit need to be pursued. Any officials found responsible for involvement in this apparent breach of trust must be charged.”

“The auditors say a significant part of the unremitted funds is supposed to have gone towards a kerosene subsidy that had been stopped two and a half years earlier by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. His decree never appeared in the official gazette, leading some to question whether it ever had legal force.

“Evidence disclosed in the report suggests this is a sideshow. The executive secretary of the agency charged with administering subsidies confirmed that, acting on Yar’Adua’s orders, it had ceased granting subsidies on kerosene. There was no appropriation for such a subsidy in the 2012 or 2013 budgets,” he stated.

“Nigerians paid N120-N140 a litre of kerosene, far more than the supposed subsidised price of N50, yet the state oil company withheld $3.4billion to pay for a subsidy that in effect did not exist”.

Furthermore, Sanusi said he was also interested in knowing whether the NNPC remitted to the government the entire proceeds of its crude oil sales.

If the NNPC failed to do so, Sanusi wondered whether there is proof of the purpose to which the unreleased amounts were applied and also if the Corporation has the legal authority to withhold the funds.