$10.8bn ‘missing’ money spent by Nigerians –NNPC

In its bid to further defend how it spent the allegedly missing $10.8bn, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Monday stated that the fund was not missing but was used by Nigerians.

Specifically, the Group Managing Director of the corporation, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, declared that if the fund was missing, then it was missing in the pockets of Nigerians.

In what seemed to be a reply to the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the NNPC boss stated that the corporation had persistently filed-in its claims to the Federation Account monthly.

While explaining how the fund was spent, Yakubu said, “The $10.8bn is not a missing money; if it is missing, (then) is missing to the pockets of the beneficiaries who are you and me.”

Okonjo-Iweala had stated that the NNPC would provide evidence to show that the fund was judiciously spent.

“If the money was spent on operational cost, let us see evidence that it was spent in an authorised way. And if not, let the amount be remitted to the Federation Account,” she had said.

According to Yakubu, the biggest chunk of the $10.8bn was the subsidy incurred on petrol and kerosene.

He said, “This is part of NNPC’s quarterly allocation which it is to provide to the country, especially for petrol. NNPC is the only importer and producer of kerosene in Nigeria. The corporation brings in kerosene and sells at less than N50 at designated depots and the landing cost of this is over N150.

“Now we compute these numbers on monthly basis and that amount plus the subsidy on PMS, which we all know, amounts to about 80 per cent of this $10.8bn that we are talking about.

“So what we do is to account for it and they are unrealisable flows, and are unrealisable because they have subsidies and we do not have control over the prices, but we are asked to account for the crude at international crude oil price.”