The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has asked the Federal Government to probe past payments from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company which it claims are in the range of over $4 billion.

In a statement on Sunday by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Lai Muhammadu, the party also requested for the probing of the ”dividend payments totalling $4,728,136,946 paid to the Federal Government (FG) between 2004 and 2009.

The party claimed that out of the dividend payments only $127,851,348.19 was credited to the FG’s independent account with JP Morgan, leaving a balance of over $4 billion.

The APC’s request is coming days after the Federal Government gave states a relief fund drawn from the NLNG account to clear unpaid workers’ salaries.

President Muhammadu Buhari approved the sum of $2.1 billion dollars from the income and education tax of the NLNG to be paid to states, an action that has generated controversy within the political sphere.

The decision was taken days after President Muhammadu Buhari said he met a near-empty treasury.

In the statement, the APC questioned why all the past taxes and dividends were neither fully paid into the Federation Account nor shared by the three tiers of government. “What happened to the funds?” the ruling party questioned.

The APC spokesman further urged the FG to, as part of the investigation, ask the PDP where it kept the $5.5 billion which it said was the dividend paid to the FG by the NLNG before the May 29 handover.

Commending the decision of the Federal Government to share the money with the states, the party said recent actions of President Buhari were bringing transparency into governance in Nigeria.

“It is helping to plug financial leakages,” Mr Mohammed said.