Missing oil money: Sanusi’s claims, cheap blackmail – FG

The Presidency, on Wednesday, asked suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to provide a clear response to allegations of financial recklessness levelled against him and stop misleading Nigerians and the international community that his suspension was because he alleged that monies were unremitted to national coffers by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

Addressing State House correspondents, yesterday, Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, reiterated that Sanusi’s suspension had nothing to do with his disclosure of alleged shortfalls in remittances by NNPC.

Abati said as a demonstration of government’s transparency, it has ordered a forensic audit of the NNPC to unravel the truth about its remittances.

Missing $20b: I want the whole truth, says Okonjo-Iweala

The  Minister of Finance  and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has demanded to know the whole truth about the alleged missing $20b which the suspended Central Bank Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said is missing from the federation account.

A statement Wednesday from the finance ministry to the BBC,  said the minister, “ asked for urgent action with regard to an independent forensic audit of conflicting claims of unaccounted funds made by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamdio Sanusi.”

According to the BBC, the direct statement from Dr Okonjo Iweala, said, “My position on this has been clear from the start. The Ministry of Finance’s reconciliation showed a shortfall of $10.8bn in NNPC remittances to the Federation account. After this, the conflicting claims continued with new figures such as $20bn being mentioned. So since 13th February I have called for an independent forensic audit. 

President Goodluck Jonathan indeed announced last night that there will be an investigation into whether there are any funds missing from NNPC. He also indicated that the correct process needs to be followed in this investigation and I understand that the entity that has the proper authority to initiate such an investigation is the Auditor General of the federation.

NNPC will account for missing $10.8bn- Okonjo-Iweala

The Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said that the ministry will make sure that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, accounts for the missing $10.8 billion oil revenue.

She spoke, Sunday, in Lagos at a session with the South South Professionals, adding that it was her job to ensure that every money belonging to the Federal Government goes into the Federation Account. The Minister said that the ministry played the right role in the case of the missing oil money raised by the Central Bank Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, by helping to reconcile the revenue shortfall, to the outstanding balance of $10.8 billion.

”We have the Federation Allocation Accounts Committee, FAAC, which is chaired by the Minister of State for Finance, with state commissioners for finance, NNPC, and FIRS as members. “Whenever there is a case of revenue questions we turn to the FIRS and NNPC for explanations, and we don’t need to make noise about it on the pages of newspapers.

“And that is what we did in in the case of the missing oil revenue. We have reconciled the accounts and we are still reconciling, and the outstanding is $10.8 billion. The NNPC said that the money was used for operational expenses, but we have asked them to account for how the money was spent and what it was spent for, so as to ascertain that there is no case of unauthorised spendings. ”

So we played our role, and the ministry should be credited. We are for professionalism and transparency. Our job is to ensure every money belonging to the federation comes in, so we will ask NNPC to account for the $10.8 billion. ”On budget implementation, the Minister noted that there were challenges in the nation’s budgeting process, which must be resolved. “Sometimes you get budget that is not easy to implement because of the way things have been solved around.’’