The Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi, said he did nothing wrong alerting President Goodluck Jonathan of an alleged missing N8 trillion oil money, because part of his duties expects him to hint the president whenever he suspects public funds were being diverted.
Appearing before the Senate finance committee on Wednesday, Mr. Sanusi said while he did not conclude the money was missing, he informed the president to order an investigation.
“The numbers were about $65billion exported by NNPC and about $15billion repatriated to Federation Account out of that. Now, in view with our duty as the banker of the government, we had the responsibility of alerting the President and request a thorough investigation of this matter,” Mr. Sanusi said.
“I repeat Mr. Chairman that we did not see the letter as a conclusion of our investigation but an invitation to investigate. So, the conclusion that $49.8billion was missing was wrong even though we had the allegation that it wasn’t remitted.”
Mr. Sanusi also said an ongoing review of relevant accounts between the CBN, the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance showed that only $12 billion (N1.9 trillion) was missing as of yet.
The Finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who oversees the NNPC, were at the meeting.
Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala interjected Mr. Sanusi’s claim of $12 billion, and told the lawmakers the outstanding figure was $10.8 billion. Even so, she said the sum was not missing and would be accounted for as the meetings are ongoing.
The CBN governor’s claim in a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan stirred outrage and prompted calls for immediate investigation. In the letter, Mr. Sanusi said the NNPC had failed to remit 76 per cent of oil sales revenue for several months.
The NNPC denied the claim. The CBN, NNPC and the finance ministry have met for days to examine the figures.
For the first time since his letter to President Goodluck was published, Mr. Sanusi on Wednesday categorically confirmed the letter originated from him.
The CBN governor said while he did not conclude $48.9 billion was missing, it was his duty to notify the president if he suspected any part of government revenues were not accounted for.
He said it was “unfortunate” the letter was leaked to the media.
“I found it very unfortunate it (letter) was leaked to the press and the answer is ‘Yes’, the CBN Governor did send that letter with those contents,” he said. “By way of those contents, the Central Bank and Finance Ministry and the government were very much concerned over the years at the very low rate of accrual to the reserves in spite of very high level of oil prices and in particular, depletion of excess crude account in spite of what seems to be very high level of oil sales.”
Mr. Sanusi said since alerting the president, the Minister of Finance, Minister of Petroleum Resources, CBN, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and the Department of Petroleum , DPR, set up technical team and began a review of the outstanding monies.
“The major progress has been the provision of Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) by MPC documents to show that even though they did ship that amount in question which is a little more than $67billion, about $24billion was actually not their crude but crude shipped on behalf of third parties like oil companies, tax in crude and also for third party financing and so that already addresses half of the amount,” he said.
He said the shortfall was now with domestic crude lifting of $28billion, from which the CBN believes $12 billion was still unaccounted for.
“Now, we still are in the process of trying to reconcile that number and we have not even started talking of the sales, the export sales tax, which is about $2billion, which will come after the sales and the Finance Ministry has told us that even before now, there is ongoing negotiation and discretion with NNPC ad-hoc committee and these number have always been discussed at the level of Commissions of Finance,” he said.
Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said the figure is $10.8 billion.
The Senate committee on finance approved Mr. Sanusi’s request they be allowed more time to conclude all reconciliation of accounts.
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