The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Forensic Audit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is generating a lot of interest. So also is the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), now on the shelf of the National Assembly. And as electioneering progresses, these two documents have become subjects of intense politicking as well. Prior to the commencement of the PwC audit, there were allegations of an unremitted $20billion that was later reviewed to $10.8bn and then $12bn and finally, $49.8bn by the Makarfi-led Senate committee. To assuage public anxiety the audit exercise became inevitable. Still, allegations persisted that even the audit was a half-hearted cover-up attempt and that its report was not likely to see the light of day.
However, the firm concluded its assignment, even as the submission and publication of the highlights of the PwC report by the auditor general of the federation are raising allegations that the report indicted the NNPC on account of its recommendation that it should pay the sum of $1.48bn, representing the balance of the signature bonus for the oil assets divested by Shell, and which were assigned to the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), its upstream subsidiary.
NNPC, on its part, is insisting in its comments on the report that the recommendation did not amount to an indictment, as the $1.48bn is an outstanding signature bonus that is clearly outside the alleged unremitted $49.8bn crude oil sales proceeds. But the matter has refused to go away, with fresh demands on the federal government to publish the full PwC audit report. The House of Representatives may have reopened this issue, even though it stood down a motion for its investigation of the allegation earlier upon discovering that the Senate had mandated its committee on finance to look into the matter. Before the PwC report, the Senate Committee on Finance had come up with a report that absolved NNPC of culpability in the alleged unremitted or missing oil revenue.
In our opinion, public interest would be better served should the government decide to publish the full report that we believe will be in accord with the transparency initiative of the administration. Nevertheless and having said this, we believe that the politicisation of the PwC audit report with the sole intention of looking for signs to be used to indict the NNPC would be tantamount to a witch-hunt and is therefore not advisable. We note that extant laws (NNPC Act) empower the NNPC to defray its operation costs and expenditure from proceeds of crude oil sales. This was clearly noted in the Senate and the PwC reports.
As things stand, we are persuaded that national interest would benefit more if effort is channelled towards getting the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) passed expeditiously by the National Assembly, to provide the legal basis for the reform and transformation of the NNPC, as recommended in the PwC report.
