BY LAWRENCE ETIM.
Owing to some serious lapses and the lack of clarity on the non-remittance of oil revenue by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Federation Account, the federal government has taken the step to subject the state-run oil firm to integrity checks by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
The Auditor-General, Mr. Samuel Ukura, disclosed this on Thursday at the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts (PAC), saying his office had sent officials to audit the accounts of the corporation. Ukura informed the committee that his office had trained 20 officials for the purpose of carrying out this assignment. “We trained 20 professionals in oil and gas sector auditing last year, and as I speak to you, they’re already on the field auditing the NNPC,” Ukura explained.
The auditor-general said they achieved a 100 per cent implementation under the recurrent expenditure plan. Equally, he said salaries were paid promptly, while hundreds of staff were trained, among others, for which N60 million was expended. However, chairman of the committee, Hon. Solomon Adeola Olamilekan (APC, Lagos), and other members expressed concern over the seeming conflicting figures contained in the document submitted to them by the auditor-general’s office.
Subsequently, it directed Ukura to provide all the relevant receipts for transactions made last year, saying as nobody audits that office, the committee is vested with the responsibility to do so. The auditor-general’s 2014 budget defence has been deferred till next Tuesday so as to enable him address inconsistencies in the documents submitted.