By Energy Worth
Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru, has urged the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), as an independent arbiter, to ensure recovery of revenues borne by the corporation on behalf of the Federal Government.
Baru, who spoke on Wednesday, during a courtesy visit by the Acting Chairman of RMAFC, Shettima Abba-Gana, to the corporation, said the NNPC, apart from being a Federal Government agency that supervises government’s investment in the oil and gas industry, was also a business enterprise and petroleum products supplier of last resort.
The GMD, also in a statement, said since September 2017 when most of the major marketers stopped importation of petroleum products, NNPC, as the supplier of last resort, had been importing petroleum products to guarantee energy security.He, therefore, urged the RMAFC, as an independent arbiter, to use its position to ensure recovery of revenues borne by NNPC on behalf of the Federal Government.
However, Abba-Gana, who commended the corporation for its efforts at improving accountability and transparency, said RMAFC, as a revenue monitor and auditor, was satisfied with the steps taken so far by the Baru-led management to improve accountability and transparency.
He said the commission would continue to regularly interface with NNPC to ensure that the Federation Account was properly funded.Meanwhile, the Bayelsa State Government has blamed the NNPC over the dwindling of federal allocations to states, especially the Niger Delta, by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC).
The state Deputy Governor, John Gboribiogha Jonah, who stated this yesterday while presenting the income and expenditure profile of the state for June and July in Government House, Yenagoa, said there was no reason why allocations could not improve.
Jonah, who expressed worry that while every analysis showed that things have improved, indications from the NNPC were contrary to the thinking of the Governor’s Forum with regards to remittances.
He said crude oil exploitation had improved due to reduction in militant activities in the Niger Delta region just as the naira was devalued by 100 per cent, which ought to have resulted in improved federal allocations.
The deputy governor, who spoke on the issue of smuggling across the borders, said the entire border filling stations had a total capacity of 4.0 million litres and that even if Nigeria was supplying the neighbouring countries, it could not be up to 10 million litres. He said the NNPC had been unable, so far, to answer the questions raised by the Governor’s Forum, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the DPR on the figures it gave on fuel consumption and smuggling, among other things.
