It is a curiosity when the tail wags the dog because the world is used to the dog wagging the tail. Nigeria by extant provisions of law owns the country’s oil resource, and has over the years required the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC (now incorporated into Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL) to give account of oil resources dealt in and the revenue that accrued into the national treasury. That was why, before the firm’s incorporation, its accounts were routinely audited and audit queries raised wherever there was observed discrepancy between returns made by it and the records of Nigeria’s financial managers.

In March, for instance, the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF) said the defunct NNPC failed to account for some 107million barrels of crude oil it lifted for domestic consumption in 2019. The office made the claim in its 2019 audit report being considered at the time by the committees on Public Accounts of the Senate and House of Representatives. As part of six audit queries raised against NNPC, the AuGF’s office said there was a discrepancy between what NNPC reported as transferred into the Federations Account and what the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation reported. According to the report, whereas NNPC records showed that N1,272,606,864,000 was transferred by the corporation, the AGF said N608,710,292,773.44 was received, leaving a gap of N663,896,567,227.58. The AuGF thus wanted the Group Managing Director of NNPC asked to explain the discrepancy and remit the balance into the Federations Account or face sanction. Also in recent months, NNPCL has been accused of failing to remit revenue into the Federation Account since January.

Read Also; NNPCL to open 740 LPG distribution centres

In apparent blowback against claims of indebtedness, NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer Mele Kyari has said the firm isn’t owing Nigeria, but rather the country owes it N1.3trillion. Speaking at a session with Senate’s joint committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Petroleum (Upstream) and Gas last week, he did not give details but bemoaned massive oil theft and pipeline vandalism hobbling Nigeria’s oil production capacity. Kyari said inter alia that owing to oil theft, “Nigeria loses about 600,000 barrels per day, which is not healthy for the nation’s economy and in particular the legal operators in the field which has led to shutdown of some of their operational facilities.” He assured, though, that successes were recorded in efforts by security agencies in collaboration with NNPCL to tackle the trend.

The NNPCL boss will need to enlighten the public more on how Nigeria became such monumental debtor on her own natural resource, and what his agency had done before now to discharge the onus of expected remittances to the nation’s treasury. Otherwise, it will be a case of the tail wagging the dog.