"NNPC to account for missing $10.8bn oil money" - Okonjo-Iweala

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.

Okonjo-Iweala, however, said that although she was not the supervising minister for petroleum, “as Coordinating Minister, I am to bring the other ministers together to resolve issues.

“It is not my duty to do the job of other ministers, but to bring them together to resolve issues.

”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.”