Amid public outcry over missing funds to the tune of at least $10.8 billion, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy has distanced herself from efforts by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to account for the money.
The minister responding to questions on the AWOL fund from journalists said, “I am not the auditor of the NNPC account”.
The NNPC initially stated that it had spent the money on operational expenses, however their claim has not been proven to be authentic.
“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”, Okonjo-Iweala added.
“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.”