President-elect Muhammadu Buhari has said his administration would take a look at the report of the $20 billion missing funds at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) submitted by former Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
Buhari disclosed this yesterday in Abuja when he received an All Progressives Congress (APC) delegation from Adamawa State led by its governor-elect Alhaji Jibrilla Bindow.
He said “since this (missing funds) was documented, the new administration will take a lot at it.”
The president-elect who was speaking on corruption said: “You all know what the Emir of Kano talked about this when he was the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria when he said $20 billion US dollars not naira, $20 billion US dollars was unaccounted for. They said it was a lie, instead of investigating it they sacked him.”
He added “And God in his infinite mercy made him the emir of Kano, in any case that is what he wanted.”
Buhari said, “On the issue of corruption, I heard that some people have started returning money. I will not believe it until I go and see for myself. Sanusi had in March this year insisted that the issues surrounding the allegedly missing $20bn oil money had not been adequately addressed by the government.
He had earlier put the alleged missing fund at $49 billion, while the Minister of Finance, Dr. NgoziOkonjo-Iweala, said the unaccounted-for sum was between $10 billion and $12 billion, adding that the money was for crude oil sales which often captured in government accounts only after payment. She added that the payment system was not irregular. The Jonathan administration thereafter hired an international forensic audit firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to audit the account of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. When the audit firm’s report was made public, it was said to have concluded that the NNPC must remit $1.48bn to the Federation Account.
On Wednesday last week, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, MrsDiezani Alison-Madueke, told State House reporters that the NNPC had started refunding the $1.48 billion.
However, Sanusi, told Christiane Amanpour of the Cable News Network (CNN) during an interview that the level of corruption in the oil sector was still high. He said for instance, no one had accounted for the billions of dollars paid in kerosene subsidy which was not approved by the National Assembly.
Sanusi added that Nigeria’s economic crisis caused by the fall in oil prices, the stock market crash and the devaluation of the naira, was due to the mismanagement of oil funds. He said, “My position in the Central Bank was that there was always this gap of $20bn after reconciliation between what the NNPC exported and what it deposited into the Federation Account. I raised a number of issues that I think have not yet been discussed and addressed sufficiently.
“One of them is the billions of dollars being paid in kerosene subsidies without appropriation by the National Assembly and against a presidential order and we don’t know who authorised those payments and yet no one has owned up to say I authorised the payments, I made a mistake. It must stop. I think those issues need to be addressed and until we address them and begin to close all the loopholes in government revenues, we are going to continue to create opportunity for the destruction of the economy.
“It could be $20bn at the end of the day. After reconciliation it could amount to $14(bn) or $12(bn) and I think these issues reflect unconstitutional and illegal withholding of revenues from the Federation Account.
“The country is paying the price today; oil prices have crashed, the currency has been devalued, the stock market has collapsed, government revenues are in a very bad shape. Whoever wins, whether this government or the opposition, will have to deal with these issues. The petroleum sector is a major drain on the resources of the country and this has to be looked at.”
He said unemployment is the “biggest problem we have in Nigeria today because of this, apart from security challenges the next thing is to find jobs for our youths. Our youth’s form 60 percent of our population in Nigeria. Without jobs these people who are still bubbling with energy will constitute a danger for this nation. If our youths don’t get jobs we will not enjoy our stay in this nation.
“The 16 years of the PDP has further impoverished the people, it was the PDP, not the APP, not the CPC, not the APC because of that, within the next four years, we will do our best,” he said.
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