The Committee raised by the National Economic Council rose from its meeting on Thursday, announcing the appointment of two world-class firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG, to commence a fresh forensic audit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
Also, the firms are to look into the account books of all the revenue generating agencies of the Federal Government.
This was disclosed by the Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, who spoke with State House correspondents on Thursday.
The Eagle Online recalls that NEC had after its meeting of June 29 constituted a four-man panel to unravel N3.8 trillion unremitted funds to the Federation Account by the NNPC between 2012 and May 2015 as well as $2.1 billion said to have been deducted from the Excess Crude Account without approval.
Members of the Committee are Governors Adams Oshiomhole (Edo), Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), Udom Emmanuel (Akwa Ibom) and Ibrahim Dankwambo (Gombe), while Akinwunmi Ambode (Lagos) was later co-opted.
Oshiomole said the two firms are appointed to ensure a thorough and professional job is done, adding that they have so far received briefings from several agencies, including the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Central Bank of Nigeria, Department of Petroleum Resources, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria Customs Service, the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
His words: “This is about making Nigeria work for the benefit of other Nigerians and we have to bear in mind that governments are not run on the basis of collection of crude oil but government regardless of colour or political affiliation is run on tax and so if you have tax generating agencies that are not remitting taxes government cannot run like that.
“So in the long run Nigeria has to live on taxes.”
It would be recalled that the Federal Government under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan had engaged the services of PwC to carry out forensic audit of the accounts of the NNPC over allegations of missing $20 billion oil revenues.
After the forensic audit, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, the upstream sector of the NNPC, was asked to refund about $1.48 billion to the Federation Account for various unreconciled transactions.
According to Oshiomole, the previous audit by PwC was limited to the NNPC alone, which the firm also complained to the NEC committee that it was restricted and constrained by non-compliance by few government agencies, including the CBN.
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