The Federal House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has summoned Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Mr Jonah Otunla, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Budget Office to explain the alleged disappearance of N59.6bn subsidy money meant for the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Explaining that the money, which the Budget office and Accountant General’s office claimed was disbursed, was not received, NNPC officials lamented the futility of their efforts to make the Budget Office and AGF write to formally state the situation with the money.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Olamilekan Adeola directed the NNPC officials to write a formal letter explaining to the committee that the N59.6bn was not received but that Deloitte Accounting firm wrote a report claiming the disbursement of the fund.
“Towards this direction, this committee hereby summons the CBN, AGF and Budget Office to explain why such sum of money was disbursed without any documentary evidence”, Adeola said.
“NNPC, for now, cannot be indicted until otherwise proven, until the AGF and Budget Office come out with evidence that the money was disbursed and cash-backed. Once it is affirmed that the disbursement was not cash-backed, NNPC will be left off the hook”.
At a meeting exactly two weeks ago between NNPC and the committee, the explanations of Mr Bernard Otti, an Executive Director, were deemed unsatisfactory.
Otti had appeared before the committee without the documents demanded by the committee to justify the need for the amount.
However, he told the committee members that the N59bn went into payment of oil subsidy between January and June 2006, but the committee rejected the explanation, citing failure of the corporation to provide backing with relevant documents.
Hon. Adeola then summoned Group managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu to personally appear before it within two weeks in the company of all the relevant documents on the transaction.
