Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, told the Senate on Wednesday that the reconciliation of accounts being carried out by the apex bank, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Ministry of Finance had shown that only $12bn was yet to be reconciled instead of the $49.8bn he claimed was missing from the Federation Account.
His submission was promptly faulted by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala, who told the Senate Committee on Finance at a public hearing, which was also attended by the Petroleum Resources Minister, Mrs. Deziani Alison-Madueke, that records in her ministry showed that it was $10.8bn that had not been fully reconciled.
The whole nation was thrown into confusion last week when Sanusi, through a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, raised the alarm that $49.8bn being part of the proceeds of crude exported by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation between January 2012 to July 2013, had yet to be remitted to the Federation Account.
The development was brought before the Senate by Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi, which made the upper legislative chamber to ask its committee on finance to investigate the allegation.
The committee members, stakeholders and others, who attended the public hearing, which was declared open by Senate President David Mark, were astonished when Sanusi said the appreciable results had been achieved in the reconciliation of the accounts.
He said the fact that he raised the alert about the alleged missing money was not a conclusion that the money was diverted but that he was merely performing his roles as bankers to the Federal Government.
He said, “The governor of central Bank did send that letter with those contents because the CBN, the finance ministry and the federal government were very concerned overs the years by the very low rate of accrution to reserves, particularly the depletion of the excess crude account inspite of what seemed to be very high level of oil sales.
“Now, in investigating and trying to understand where the revenue leakages were, our attention was drawn to the huge difference between what appeared to be exports of crude made by NNPC and the amount repatriated into the crude account of the Federal government.
“The numbers were $65bn exported by NNPC and $15bn repatriated to the Federation account out of that. Now in keeping with our duty of bankers to the government, we have the responsibility to alert the president and request a thorough investigation of this matter.”
Source: Punch
