Presidency Wades into CBN, NNPC Feud over Missing N8Tr

President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday waded into the bickering between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria over the missing $49.8 billion oil revenue.

The CBN had accused the NNPC of shortchanging the nation’s treasury by as much as 76 per cent of total crude oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013.

A Presidency source told Daily Independent that heads of the two agencies have been warned to henceforth compare notes before going public on issues.

“The Group Managing Director of the NNPC has been queried by the Presidency, through the minister of Petroleum resources, to explain how the alleged money got missing while the CBN governor was also cautioned to first compare notes with the NNPC before coming up with such a letter.

“Both the CBN and NNPC are agencies of the government and you continue to wonder if this bickering, which is unnecessary in the first place, is not intended to discredit this administration,” the source said.

“Owing to what this issue has created, they have been ordered to henceforth compare notes before going into the public with such information,” he added.

Sanusi said in a letter dated September 25 to President Goodluck Jonathan that the NNPC earned $65.3 billion from crude oil sales between January 2012 and July 2013 but only remitted 24 percent of this to the federation account and $49.8 billion was still outstanding.

“I am constrained to formally write your Excellency, documenting serious concerns of the CBN on the continued failure of the NNPC to repatriate significant proportions of the proceeds of crude oil shipments it made in gross violation of the law,” the letter read.

General Manager, Media Relations Department of the NNPC, Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim who refuted the claims however maintained that the figure given by the CBN governor “does not represent the correct picture of crude oil lifting for the period.”

Ibrahim said in a statement that the corporation found it necessary to clarified based on the CBN’s misunderstanding of the workings of the oil and gas industry and the modality for remitting crude oil sales revenue into the Federation Account.

“For the avoidance of doubt, it needs to be stated that the figure of 594.024 million barrels of crude oil given by the CBN as the total crude oil lifting for the period of January 2012 to July 2013 does not represent the correct picture of crude oil lifting for the period.

“From our records, the correct figure is 618.55 million barrels. This shows that the CBN understated the actual crude lifting by 4.13 per cent,” Dr. Ibrahim stated.

He explained that revenue from crude oil liftings are in various categories, namely Equity Crude; Petroleum Profit Tax, Royalty, Third Party Financing and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC. Revenues from each of these categories are statutorily collected by different agencies of the government.