The Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance investigating the NNPC yesterday and said that the State Oil company was not mandated to remit all its revenue to the Federation account. The AGF said the NNPC needed only remit its net profit after deducting its expenses from the revenue.
Adoke said despite the constitutional provision ordering the NNPC to pay all its revenue into the Federation account, the NNPC could still deduct its expenses in his opinion. He was silent on if these expenses had to have been approved by the Senate prior to their being incurred.
“it is my considered view that the provision of section 162 which requires all revenue to be remitted to the Federation Account does not preclude the deduction of NNPC’S expenditure or cost of business.
” This is more so as the federating units odo not contribute to the funding of upstream petroleum operations of the NNPC and its subsidiary” Adoke said.
He added, “Only the net revenue from upstream petroleum operations of the NPDC should be paid into the Federation Account by the NNPC. In other words, NPDC is required to pay only what amounts to dividend and its crude oil proceeds to the NNPC( as its holding company) and the NNPC will in turn pay that into the Federation Account. Consequently, what the NNPC is required to pay into the Federation Account is the ‘net revenue’ as opposed to the gross revenue.”
Testifying before the Senate, the NPDC, a subsidiary of NNPC which Mallam Lamido Sanusi alleged was owing the Federation Account $6 billion, said it only deducted expenses which were earlier budgeted for. The MD of the company, Victor Briggs promised to forward the budget details to the Senate before month end.
Adoke accused Sanusi of tring to undermine his powers by seeking interpretation of the law from private legal counsel. He said, “The resort by the CBN governor to paid legal opinion from private counsel on the interpretation and application of certain constitutional provisions, the enabling statutes of government wholly owned corpoarations, regulatory agencies and policies, is not only irregular, but a deliberate attempt to wittle down the powers of the Attorney-General of the Federation as the Chief Law Officer of the Federation as enshrined in section 150 of the constitution.”
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