Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) has again been involved in another scandal, this time, the corporation is being accused of withholding $12.9billion revenue. Making the revelation, the executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr. Waziri Adio, said the revenue came from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas between 2005 and 2013. Mr Adio urged anti-graft agencies to step into the matter and recover the looted revenue. “The 2013 Oil and Gas Audit Report revealed that some government agencies like NNPC and its subsidiaries withheld $3.8billion and N358billion. Another revelation is that $12.9 billion was withheld by NNPC from NLNG between 2005 and 2013.” “We have an Act that criminalise certain behaviours. If people do not cooperate with us, if people do not give us information on time, they are liable to be prosecuted, fined and jailed. But, we have existed for 12 to 13 years and nobody has ever been tried under our Act and that is not to say some infractions would not have occurred.” He said a major challenge confronting NEITI is the lack of power to prosecute adding that NEITI only carries out audit. “There are a lot of findings that have come up over time about monies missing, about collusion between operators and government agencies, about possibility of money laundering, about all kinds of economic crimes that we are not in a position to push forward,” Adio said. Reacting to the claim, EFCC through a statement issued by the head of media and publicity, Wilson Uwujaren, said NEITI Executive Secretary spoke on the stench in the oil sector when he visited the EFCC chairman He said deepening relationship with EFCC would help send signals to all the agencies and companies that relate with NEITI to cooperate with it. Magu, assured the delegation that the commission was prepared to give a quick response in areas of need and to improve on the existing relationship between the two agencies. “Where you want us to use our teeth to bite, we would readily do so,” Magu added.
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