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NNPC Has Been Cleared Of Missing Money Scandal – Spokesman

An NNPC spokesman, Omar Ibrahim, on Monday disclosed that the petroleum agency has been cleared of all allegations leveled against it by the CBN Governor, … Continue reading NNPC Has Been Cleared Of Missing Money Scandal – Spokesman


An NNPC spokesman, Omar Ibrahim, on Monday disclosed that the petroleum agency has been cleared of all allegations leveled against it by the CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi, through its response to the controversial letter which claimed a sum of $48.9 billion was ‘missing.’

Mr Ibrahim told Channels Television during a Sunrise Daily interview that the position of theagency concerning the CBN governor’s letter to the President which made allegations of a missing 49.8 billion dollars supposedly unremitted by the agency to the FAAC, was wrongly written, insisting that “We believe that that letter was born either out of complete mischief or lack of understanding of the operations of the oil industry and how oil is marketed.”

There are five streams for crude oil proceeds: equity crude, taxes, royalty, third party and NPDC. Mr Ibrahim explained while speaking on Sunrise Daily that the total sum of monies realised from all these streams is over 67 billion dollars.

“Since we have 5 streams, NNPC is responsible for only equity crude,” he said.

What is collected in taxes is paid into CBN account for the FAAC in the name of the FIRS. For royalty, we pay it into the DPR account in the CBN.

What the NNPC pays into the Central Bank in its name is the equity, he said, adding that the ‘third party’ and the ‘NPDC’ is “not very significant.”

According to him taxes take up between 50-88 percent of the total proceeds while royalty accounts for 0-20 percent. The NNPC pays the rest into the FAAC with the CBN.

He stated that the DPR is not an off-shoot of the NNPC as widely believed but an “agency of government in the ministry of petroleum resources.” It is a parastatal “completely independent of the NNPC.”

Mr Ibrahim insisted that the 4th of October reply to the letter written on 25th of September cleared the NNPC of all allegations and “that was why nobody came back to us.”

“How it lived and became an issue now is something we’ve been wondering.”

Asked if the CBN was satisfied with NNPC’s response, Mr Ibrahim said “the CBN did not communicate to us directly and therefore we did not communicate to them directly.”

He however did not confirm if the CBN received their letter but was quick to conclude that they received the letter “because they sent it to Mr President; the President sent it to NNPC for clarification and it was sent back to His Excellency and we believe the President would have cleared shown the Governor of the Central Bank.

“That ended the matter as far as we are concerned.”

On Sanusi’s purported ignorance of the workings of the NNPC, Mr Ibrahim hinted that the governor of the apex bank does not know everything.

“People work under him and they are the ones who report to him,” he said, hinting that his immediate lieutenants did not see the letter nor approve it.”