PwC audit report confirms $18.5bn was diverted from NNPC account, says Sanusi

Sanusi

The former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and the current Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has said that the audit report on the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has confirmed that about $18.5 billion was to the Federal Government by the corporation.

In an article published by the Financial Times on May 13, Sanusi said the audit report indicated that he did not lie when he blew the whistle on the missing billions.

Sanusi was removed from his position as the CBN governor on February 20, 2014 after he insisted that about $20 billion was not remitted to the Federation Account by NNPC in spite of Federal Government’s denial of the misappropriation.

Sanusi chided the minister of petroleum resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke, for saying that the audit exonerated her ministry and the NNPC from any wrong doing.

He said that the report indicated that “the gap between the company’s oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bn”. He said the report also outlined the questionable expenses parts of the missing money were spent on.

The PwC report also indicated that some of the billions should have been expended on providing subsidy on kerosene and that the “executive secretary of the agency charged with administering subsidies confirmed that, acting on Yar’Adua’s orders, it had ceased granting subsidies on kerosene. There was no appropriation for such a subsidy in the 2012 or 2013 budgets,” Sanusi said in the article.

The Emir of Kano believed that $12.5 billion out of the $18.5bn in revenues that the state oil company did not send to the government, according to his calculations, was diverted.

He concluded the article by urging the incoming administration to pursue the line of investigation suggested in the report and that any official found culpable of any wrong doing should be “charged”.