Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has
\nsaid he did not say the truth when he alleged that the sum of $49.8
\nbillion realized from the sales of crude oil between January 2012 and July
\n2013 has been missing from the federation account.
\nSanusi who appeared before Senate Committee on Finance said $12 billion
\nwas the amount not to have been remitted to the account within the period.
\nBut the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr.
\nNgozi Okonjo-Iweala swiftly countered him.
\nThe Minister of Finance, said \u201cI just wanted to add that we found about
\n$10.8 billion. He mentioned $12billion.\u201d
\nThe now embarrassed CBN Governor told the Senator Ahmed Makarfi led
\ncCommittee, \u201cI repeat, Mr. Chairman, that we did not see the letter as a
\nconclusion of our investigation but an invitation to investigate. So, the
\nconclusion that $49.8billion was missing was wrong even though we had the
\nallegation that it was unremitted.\u201d
\n\u201cNow, since then, a lot has happened. We have heard the Minister of
\nFinance, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Central Bank, FIRS, CPR, we have
\nset up technical team and has started a process of reconciliation and
\nthere has been a lot of progress in that process.
\n\u201cI found it very unfortunate it was leaked to the press and the answer is
\n\u2018yes\u2019, the CBN Governor did send that letter with those contents. By way
\nof those contents, the Central Bank and Finance Ministry and the
\ngovernment were very much concerned over the years at the very low rate of
\naccretion to the reserves in spite of very high level of oil prices and in
\nparticular, depletion of excess crude account in spite of what seems to be
\nvery high level of oil sales.
\n\u201cNow, in investigation and trying to understand where those leakages were,
\nour attention was drawn to a huge difference between what appeared to be
\nexport of crude made by NNPC and amount repatriated into the crude equity
\naccount of the federal government.
\n\u201cThe numbers were about $65 billion exported by NNPC and about $15 billion
\nrepatriated to Federation Account out of that. Now, in view with our duty
\nas the banker of the government, we had the responsibility of alerting the
\npresident and request a thorough investigation of this matter, he said.
\nHe further explained that \u201cthe major progress has been the provision of
\nMonetary Policy Committee, PMC, by the MPC documents to show that even
\nthough they did ship that amount in question which is a little more $67
\nbillion, about $24billion was actually not their crude but crude shipped
\non behalf of third parties like oil companies, tax in crude and also for
\nthird party financing and so, that already addresses half of the amount.\u201d
\n\u201cSo, the second half is the issues around domestic crude lifting of
\n$28billion from which we feel there is a short fall, there is a general
\nconsensus among us on this even though the amount has been disputed. For
\nus in Central Bank, there is a shortfall of $12billion\u201d, he disclosed.
\nBut even with the amount, he said the CBN was still in the process of
\nreconciling the amount.
\n\u201cNow, we still are in the process of trying to reconcile that number and
\nwe have not even started talking of the sales, the export sales tax, which
\nis about $2billion, which will come after the sales. The Finance Ministry
\nhas told us that even before now, there is ongoing negotiation and
\ndiscretion with NNPC ad-hoc committee and these numbers have always been
\ndiscussed at the level of Commissions of Finance.
\n\u201cSince the objective of this committee and for all of us on this side is
\nactually to get to the bottom of it and find out exactly what is the
\namount unremitted and what is to be done and recommend actions.\u201d
\nHe pleaded for time so that the CBN, NNPC and all relevant agencies come
\nup with a collective figure.
\n\u201cWhat I would like to do is, given the progress we have made, to request
\nthat we be given little more time to continue with this process and come
\nback with the final position that is a common position among us if the
\ncommittee will so grant us, \u201dhe added
He was subsequently granted
\nthe request.
\nSpeaking at the event earlier, Senate President, David Mark,noted that the
\ncontroversial amount was still allegation but stressed that it was a
\nserious one.
\u201cAt this point what we have is allegations but it\u2019s a
\nserious allegation. When Senator Adetumbi raised the point of order, I did
\nnot allow comment on the issue
\n\u201cIt\u2019s for us to get facts so that when we come back we can make useful and
\nmeaningful contributions. The Senate has no positions on it, nobody knows
\napart from what was published in the papers, that\u2019s why we want the
\ncommittee to establish the facts, the committee, your body language and
\nutterances must be seen to be totally neutral because we have no facts, we
\nhave no position on it, we urge you to observe the facts, \u201che said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has said he did not say the truth when he alleged that the sum of $49.8 billion realized from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n