A report by the office of Nigeria’s Auditor-General has indicted the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) for alleged misappropriation of funds and diversion of revenue meant for the Federation in 2021.
The indictments are contained in the 2021 Auditor-General’s annual report published in November 2024. The 558-page report was recently submitted to the National Assembly as Nigeria’s Constitution provides.
The report shows a troubling blend of questions bordering on misappropriation of funds involving the NNPCL. In one case, the auditor general indicted the state-owned oil firm of unauthorised deductions of N82.9 billion from federation revenue for refinery rehabilitation.
The NNPCL also got knocks from the report for its “irregular deductions of funds from domestic crude sales at source,” which the auditor general said was a breach of the Nigerian Constitution and Financial Regulations (3106 and 3129) 2009 in respect of economy of expenditure.
The report recommended that the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL should “furnish reasons to the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly, for the unauthorised deduction of funds and to recover and remit the sum of the lost funds” to the government’s treasury.
Unaccounted N82 billion.
From the review of NNPCL payment records for 2020 and 2021, the audit observed that N82.9 billion was “deducted from the sale of Crude Oil and Gas (Federation Revenue) from the 2020 and 2021 records, and a total of N82.9 billion which were deducted at source for purported Refineries Rehabilitation.”
The report said the above transactions were not supported by “evidence of authorisation and approvals before the deductions were made.”
The auditor general said the anomalies discovered in the accounts of the NNPCL could be attributed to weaknesses in its internal control system. It could also amount to misappropriation of funds, diversion of revenue meant for the federation, and loss of federation revenue, the report stated.
