By Haruna Salami
The Senate has given the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) one week to explain discrepancies discovered in the 2023 audited of the company particularly the N203 trillion approved expenses and N107 receivables.
This was contained in the audit query to the oil giant in the report of the Auditor General for the federation before the Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC).
The chairman of the committee, Senator Aliyu Wadada (Nasarawa West) disclosed at a meeting with the NNPC team led by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Adedapo Segun and external Auditors the company on Wednesday.
Mr. Segun told the committee that the reconciliations between approved expenses (JV cash call) of N103 trillion and the actual amount of N107 trillion paid by NNPC (receivables) were performed, but added that there is a governance step, which had not taken place.
The CFO said “what the auditors will do under the circumstances is to secularize the parties, the JV partners, which they did, which is even more reliable than what we as NNPC would have told them. In doing that, they would have reached out to each of the JV partners and said, NNPC claims that your cash called X amount, and NNPC also claims that it’s paid you Y amount during this period. And that is what gave the auditors the comfort, because they got information from the counterparts of their clients, confirming that, yes, we cash called X, and NNPC paid us Y.
“To that extent, it’s basically a case of the same party on the same transaction, saying, I billed you a certain amount on the same transaction, and you paid a certain amount. But because the governance process had not been concluded, the netting-off did not happen. But individually, those amounts were confirmed by the JV partners. The amounts the JV partners billed as cash call, and the amounts NNPC paid to the JV partners as payment for JV, by the NNPC cash calls without circularization done, confirmed by the JV partners.
He said this was the first time NNPC was reporting from the NNPC the assets and liabilities that were transferred as a result of the provisions of the PIA from the federation to NNPC Limited. What was it that so reported as assets and liabilities of the federation in the books of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) and what was it that so reported as the assets and liabilities of NNPC in the books of NNPC Corporation had become merged into one set of accounts of NNPC Limited.
