Abuja (Sundiata Post) — As economic recession bites harder,the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has urged the Federal Government to put urgent machineries in motion to recover $21 billion unremitted funds disclosed by its independent reports of the extractive industry, to fund the country’s economic recovery plan.
In a policy brief, which focused on unremitted funds, economic recovery and oil sector reform, NEITI noted that the recovery of these huge unremitted funds is more than enough to jump-start the economy.
Waziri Ado, the Executive Secretary of NEITI, gave further insight on the unremmitted funds, on Tuesday, in Abuja.
‘‘Findings from a series of audits of the oil and gas sector carried out by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) shows that NNPC and its upstream arm, NPDC, have failed to remit $21.778 billion and N316.074 billion to the Federation Account.
“These are amounts due from three main sources:
“Federation assets divested to NPDC and NPDC’s legacy liabilities; payments for domestic crude allocation to NNPC; and dividends from investment in Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG) paid to but withheld by NNPC. Recovery of these funds will significantly enhance government’s fiscal position in the short term,” he said.
The NEITI brief urged the government to go beyond recovery of these funds to putting in place adequate measures to ensure revaluation of the assets divested to NPDC to determine the actual market prices with a view to recovering the full value of these assets and securing optimal benefits from them.
The brief further urged the government to review the the relationship between NPDC, NNPC and the federation to determine and establish effective lines of accountability of NNPC’s subsidiaries, and determine optimal mode of operation in line with global best practices.
It further urged the government to review the process of acquisition of OMLs by NNPC and NPDC to ensure that long-term net positive value is realised given the availability of alternative economic option.
Furthermore, a breakdown of the unremitted funds disclosed by NEITI reports of the oil and gas industry over the years include outstanding payments of $1.7 billion arising from the transfer of eight OMLs from Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC) and the sum of $2.2 million from four OMLs from Nigeria Agip Oil Company to the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, respectively.
NEITI reports disclosed that the NPDC is yet to pay for these major national assets that were transferred for its commercial operations.
Also contained in the breakdown of unremitted funds is cash call paid on the transferred OMLs amounting to about $148.28 million.
This is in addition to legacy liabilities amounting to the sum of $1.5 billion and the huge sum of $15.8 billion unremitted to the Federation account from accrued NLNG dividends between 2000 and 2014.