NEITI Executive Secretary On How NNPC Withheld FG’s $20 billion

On Tuesday, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Initiative released a report that claimed that Nigeria’s State oil firm NNPC owes billions to the Nigerian Government. In light of this CNBC Africa’s Wole Famurewa spoke to the Executive Secretary of the agency, Waziri Adio for an exclusive full breakdown of the watchdog’s allegations.

Here is the leading quote:

“We calculated that NPDC and NNPC are owing the federation or withholding from the federation the total sum of $21 billion and N316 billion naira. This is money that was supposed to be remitted to the federation account but was not remitted.”

He also broke down the figure to its components:

NLNG dividends amounts to $15.8 billion from 2000- 2014. NPDC has liabilities due to the federation that amount to $1.4 billion and N70 billion and then he gave some details around the agency’s findings.

“Some assets were divested to NPDC by NNPC. There were 8 assets under the Shell JV. These were OML 4,26,30,34,38, 40, 41, and 42. The country owns 55 percent in these assets and they were divested to NPDC by NNPC between 2010 and 2011, and they were valued at $1.8 bn by DPR. This is something significant that we need to note. PWC did a study that Shell got $2.7 bn for its own 45% stake. Where as our own 55% stake was valued at $1.8 billion. But that’s not the end of the story. Out of that sum NPDC paid only $100 million leaving an outstanding of $1.7 billion, and they continued to enjoy all the benefits that should accrue from full ownership of those assets.”