Posted by By Everest Amaefule on
The final report on the audit of the earnings of the Federal Government from the oil and gas sector between 1999 and 2004 showed that $16m could not be traced.
The final report on the audit of the earnings of the Federal Government from the oil and gas sector between 1999 and 2004 showed that $16m could not be traced.
The $16m represents the total amount of money which oil companies had reportedly paid to the Federal Government that could not be found in the records of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The initial report of the audit had indicated discrepancies totalling $232m between what the oil firms claimed they paid and the amount in the coffers of the CBN.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, had halted the presentation of the audit report on May 3 and ordered the British audit firm, Hart Nurse, to do a more thorough job by locating the discrepancies between the records of the oil companies and those of the CBN.
Obasanjo had given the audit firm three months to do its work and report back to the Federal Government. 'Where is the discrepancy? We should follow up this to a logical conclusion," he had said.
The Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative chaired by the Minister of Education, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, had contracted the British audit firm to establish the Federal Government's receipts from the oil sector.
NEITI's Ag. Executive Secretary, Dr. Bright Okogu, who confirmed the new audit report in a telephone interview with our correspondent on Friday, said that contrary to speculations that the report had been swept under the carpet, the the audit firm finished its second assignment within the three months specified by Obasanjo.
According to him, invoices from the different organisations involved in the exercise were scrutinised and the level of discrepancies now came down to $16m.
He said that the new level of discrepancy was acceptable within accounting standards, since it represented 0.02 per cent of the total sum of money received by the Federal Government within the period under review.
He also confirmed that the NEITI had been holding meetings with the oil companies and government agencies whose accounting procedures and record keeping were found spurious by the audit firm.
Prior to the clarification by the Federal Government, THE PUNCH had written to Mr. Chris Nurse, the Managing Director of the Hart Group, asking for his comment on the discrepancy.
In his response dated October 5, 2006, Nurse said, 'Thank you for approaching us and for your continued interest in the issue. Excuse me giving a somewhat limited reply.
'I need to refer you to the Secretariat of the NEITI. They are our clients. We are not at liberty to make public the results of our work - that is for them."
Decisions have also been reached with government organisations on what they must put in place to strengthen their systems and avoid such discrepancies in the future.
Apart from the CBN, other organisations that have been involved in the remediation meetings include the Department of Petroleum Resources, the Federal Inland Revenue Service and oil companies.
Okogu said, 'We have reached a level of understanding on the best way they can address the lapses the auditors noted. DPR, for instance, is required to install better equipment to monitor the movement of oil on real time basis."
Several groups and individuals have raised questions on the status of the audit report since the President ordered for a more thorough job to be done in May.
The International Crisis Group, for instance, in a publication on September 28 said the audit report meant little unless investigations determined what happened to the ‘missing money'.
On the group's call for NEITI's mandate to be extended to investigate how oil monies are allocated and used after they have entered the CBN, Okogu said this was not necessary.
He said it was important for NEITI to remain focused on its mandate, as there were already agencies that monitor how government funds were allocated and used.