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Amaechi, NPA to account for N166bn revenue
By Christiana Ekpa
The House of Representatives adhoc committee investigating the status of all recovered looted funds yesterday summoned the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to appear before it’s and explain the $300m alleged slush funds it deposited with the defunct Skye Bank, Presently Polaris.
This is as the House summoned the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and the Management of the Nigeria Port Authority to give details of revenue accruing to the Nigeria Port Authority as at December 31, 2016 amount to about N166,685,929,000 which were not properly captured in the statement of account of the agency.
Chairman of the committee, investigating all recovered loots and assets from 2002 – 2020, Hon.
Adejoro Adeogun, gave the summon yesterday when the Acting Managing Director of Polaris Bank, Innocent Ike, appeared before it during its resumed investigative hearing.
Polaris Bank’s MD had told the committee that the NNPC opened a current account with the then Skye Bank in January 2012 in which various deposits totalling $300 million were made over time.
He said the money that was in Skye Bank and subsequently Polaris was money deposited in normal business transaction as any other customer, saying it was not a slush fund.
“When the instruction was given by the Federal Government to transfer the money to the TSA, we simply could not pay because of the challenges the bank was having at that time. We engaged the various government agencies and we disclosed the amount to them.
“The liquidity issues really arose because bank in the normal course financial intermission lent out money particularly to the oil and gas sector because of the challenges that the sector had gone through earlier on. So customers were not able to pay back all the money at the time it was required to enable the bank to return the money.
“We did explain this situation to the various committees and government agencies that we met including the CBN who were of course copied in the of all these engagement.
“Somewhere along the line, precisely December 2018, the federal government through the now disbanded presidential investigation panel for the recovery of public property instituted a suit on this matter.
“We appointed the defence of Falana & Falana to handle the case and represent us in the process. However in 2019 February, in demonstration of our commitment to begin to repay that deposit, we made a proposal to begin to make an instalment payment of $10 million monthly and we started that payment from that very month. And because the federal government found merit in our case and commitment to begin that payment, subsequently, the government agreed that the monthly payment should be entered as consent payment and it was so done.
“We started that payment as agreed and entered as consent judgement and we have to state that as of today before this honourable committee, we have made a total payment of $224, 324, 958 and 75 cent which was the outstanding as of February 2019. Today, we therefore have nothing, not a dollar, not a cent outstanding in Polaris bank in favour of NNPC . We have fully repaid that amount of money, we don’t have anything outstanding in our books.
However, the committee told Polaris Bank that the NNPC in its recent letter, said it was yet to receive the said payment as claimed and therefore, directed the bank to furnish it with the evidence of repayments to the NNPC.
The committee also queried the NNPC over the rationale behind the deposit of such amount of public fund in the bank, adding that its management must appear to provide explanations on issues surrounding the fund.
Meanwhile, the House also summoned the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi
and the Management of the Nigeria Port Authority to give details of revenue accruing to the Nigeria Port Authority as at December 31, 2016 amount to about N166,685,929,000 which were not properly captured in the statement of account of the agency.
They are also to explain cost of services rendered to the Authority amounting to about N103.996 billion including channels and water ways maintenance (N65.130 billion) and Port and Quays Expenses of N38.412 billion).
The Minister and the NPA management who were initially expected to appear before the House Committee on Public Account on Thursday were said pleaded for another date to cause appearance and were given a July 8 date to appear before the committee.
They are expected to respond to audit queries contained in the comments of the Auditor General of the Federation on the group financial statement of the Nigeria Port Authority for 2016.
They are expected to give a breakdown of the Ports and Quays Services income stating the respective income from each of the services, scheduled oil terminal dues, details of pilotage and service boats and the nature of rentals services offered and rates applied.
In addition, the Auditor General said they are expected to answer questions from the lawmakers, giving breakdown of maintenance, budgetary provisions and evidence of work done on the channels and waterways as “examination of the accounts revealed that the channels and waterways maintenance rose from N44.427 billion in 2015 to N64.130 billion in 2016, an increase of over N20 billion.
The comments suggest that the NPA incurred about N38.412 billion as service charge on the Ports and Quays and demanded that the management of the Authority provide details of how these charges were incurred and also to explained what they meant by the term “others” for which about N4.7 billion was spent.
The Auditor General said that further examination of the accounts of the NPA revealed that Intels Integrated Services Limited were over paid their commission to the tune of N2.099 billion.
The Minister and the NPA management are also to explain what happened to the dividend income of N643.006 million received from their joint venture partners as well as interest income of about N97.8 million and N28.7 million being interest from bank deposits and interest on loan and recievables.
Other queries against the NPA include administrative expenses of N61 billion which include professional charges of N638 million, donation and subscription of N1.88 billion, exchange loss of N7,3 billion, defined benefit expenses of N11.4 billion and director’s remuneration of N4.2 million.
The Auditor General’s query signed by Adolphus Aghughu and dated 24th May, 2021also identified what it called understatement of depreciation charges to the tune of N6.4 billion stressing that “the provision made against eight classes of property amounted to N4.472 billion as against N10.891 million arrived at during vetting.
“If however, the under provision of depreciation was attributable to assets which have been fully written down, the nominal values at which such assets were retained in the books should be diusclosed.”
