Tag: ECA

•The job is better done by professionals

Rising from its inaugural meeting last week, the National Economic Council (NEC), mandated the governors of Gombe, Edo, Akwa Ibom and Kaduna states to probe the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole, who addressed the media on behalf of the NEC, gave the reasons why the probe had become necessary. He referred specifically to the submissions to the NEC by the NNPC and officials of the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation that showed that the NNPC earned about N8.1 trillion between 2012 and May 2015, out of which N4.3 trillion was paid by the corporation into the Federation Account.

Aside seeking answers to how the huge differential of N3.8 trillion withheld by NNPC was spent, he also disclosed that the quartet will seek to unravel the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of another $2.1 billion allegedly withdrawn unilaterally by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in the last six months of its tenure, without the authority of NEC.

Merely by the depth of the fiscal crisis across most states of the federation, a good part of which can easily be blamed on the spendthrift accounting of oil revenue by the immediate past administration of President Jonathan, we can understand the urgency and earnestness of the NEC to deliver results – and more money to the treasury. Yet, as important as that element is, it is only a minor part of the more complex, exacting task of stripping the NNPC of its opaque practices that continue to deny the country value for money, as a first step in the process of its overdue restructuring.

We start on the basic premise that the governors are perfectly in order – and that Nigerians are entitled to know how the funds, right down to its most minute details, were spent. We also accept as given that there can be no revenue without costs. What Nigerians would like to know is how a corporation that has never successfully drilled a water aquifer let alone an oil well, an entity globally renowned for playing the collecting agency could justifiably claim to spend nearly 47 percent of its entire collection on itself?

As far as we know, financial activities of entities, whether public or private, are supposed to be captured in the relevant budget instruments. Why should the NNPC continue to be an exception? Does the current practice of collect and spend –almost without restrictions – have basis in law? How does one measure if indeed value was delivered? Could NNPC as the collecting agency for the Federation Account on its own determine what it spends for whatever reasons without reference to the states?

These are questions for which Nigerians have long sought answers to no avail. But then, a panel of four governors to undertake the probe? This is where our misgivings derive from. As professionals in diverse fields in their own rights, we have no doubt that the governors would be able to prise through the complex maze designed by NNPC to escape scrutiny. The real issue is whether they would have the energy and time to undertake a thorough job in view of their busy schedules. Asking the governors to sift through the thousands of pages of documents in addition to taking testimonies from dozens of witnesses seems to us a needless and gratuitous addition to the job brief of their Excellencies at this point in time. We advise the NEC to turn over the assignment to professionals; the latter in our view would do a far more credible and thorough  job than the quartet would be able to deliver.

‘Asking the governors to sift through the thousands of pages of documents in addition to taking testimonies from dozens of witnesses seems to us a needless and gratuitous addition to the job brief of their Excellencies at this point in time. We advise NEC to turn over the assignment to professionals; the latter in our view would do a far more credible job than the quartet would be able to deliver’