The Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr Andrew Yakubu, made a shocking revelation to members of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Wednesday when he declared that the reason for the non-remittance of independent revenue accruing to the Federal Government was because the corporation had been operating at a loss.
However, the committee, headed by Honourable Abdulmumin Jibrin, has affirmed that the corporation would be compelled to remit to the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the four years not remitted to the Federal Government.
The chairman of the committee, who maintained that the action of the corporation was against the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, however, directed the corporation to allow the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF) to scrutinize its records from 2009 to 2012. According to Honourable Jibrin, from records, NNPC made N2 trillion in 2009; as its internally generated revenue for 2010, it made N2.1 trillion; while it generated N1.9 trillion in N2011 and N259 billion as at July 2012.
However, the NNPC boss, said: “we have to buy crude at commercial rates, but have to sell at regulated prices; as such it is difficult to generate profit and that is why we have difficulties in remitting to the CRF… Also, the cost of generating that IGR is more than the IGR because we spend more to produce the products from where we generate the profits; as we incur additional cost to produce those products. Also, we lost nothing less than N600 million per week to vandalism, and that is also beyond our control.”
Continuing, Jubrin said, “operating at a loss is not an issue. You generated some money and the law is clear on what belongs to you and to the other, but you chose to ignore it and refused to remit to the Federal Government its dues.”
