The committee set up by the National Economic Council to engage with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on remittances to the Federation Account says it has discovered shortfalls in payments by the corporation. Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State, North West Nigeria, stated this while briefing State House correspondents after a meeting between members of the committee and President Muhammadu Buhari.
Yari said the committee met with the NNPC on Wednesday and discovered that what the NNPC was paying for Joint-Venture Cash Calls was higher than what it was paying into the Federation Account. He said what the committee found out during the meeting with the NNPC was that “the entire federation is being short changed by these activities.”
According to him, there was no payment of Joint Venture Cash Calls from 2010 when the price of oil was $110 per barrel up to when President Buhari took over in 2015. “So what they are doing now, why the account of the federation account is always being low is because they are paying dual, paying the existing at the same time paying the arrears,” Yari said.
He said the committee, at the meeting with NNPC, looked at how to get the Joint-Venture Partners to understand the situation of things in the sector and see how to keep to the agreements now that the price of oil has started rising.
Other governors present at the meeting were Aminu Masari of Katsina, Simon Lalong of Plateau and Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom.
