No public funds withheld, Kyari counters NEITI’s claim

The Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has dismissed a report by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) that the NNPCL failed to remit some monies into the Federation Account.

In its ‘2021 Oil and Gas Industry Report’, which was released in September 2023, NEITI had alleged that NNPCL did not pay approximately N2.8 trillion in taxes to the Federal Government in 2022.

NEITI stated that of about N3.5tn ($8.25bn at N448/$1 exchange rate in 2022) owed the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) during the period under review, NNPCL was owing more than 80 per cent (N2.8tn) of the outstanding tax collectable revenues.

But, reacting, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, expressed disappointment with NEITI for going public with its report “instead of seeking clarification on any perceived gap in its assessment.”

A statement by the Chief Corporate Communications Officer, NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye, quoted Kyari as saying this during a visit by a delegation from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), in Abuja on Thursday.

He explained that NNPCL was holding no public funds back and that what NEITI reported as non-remittance was what was due to the company as payment for taking the burden of fuel subsidy on behalf of the government.

He disclosed that NNPCL would have released its Audited Financial Statement (AFS) for 2022 in June 2023 but could not do so because it had no substantive Board of

Directors at that time, adding that the AFS would be published on the company’s website in the next few days.

Meanwhile, EITI’s Deputy Executive Director, Mr. Bady Baldé, during the visit disclosed that EITI had scored the NNPCL very high in its latest global assessment.

Baldé, who said the visit was to communicate the group’s findings in its recent global assessment to the company, noted that NNPCL fared very well among companies in the same category.

He added that only Equinox of Norway fared better than NNPCL in the assessment.