The office of the Auditor-General of the Federation has revealed that Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and two other agencies deducted about N1.5trn from the N6.4trn generated by revenue collection agencies in 2017 without appropriate authorisation.
This was disclosed in the audit report released by the office on Wednesday and signed by the Auditor-General for the Federation, Anthony Ayine.
According to the report, NNPC generated N2.41trn but deduction of N1.3trn before remitting the balance of N1.07trn into the federation account.
The DPR also generated N733.05bn, deducted and paid N26.77bn into a royalty account before remitting the balance of N706bn into the federation account.
Similarly, FIRS generated N2.66trn but paid about N2.45trn into the federation account.
Ayine in the report expressed concern over the deductions of funds, stating that it had impacted negatively on the funds available for allocation to the three tiers of government.
The report reads in part, “The total revenue inflows to the federation account from the various collecting agencies as per the Central Bank of Nigeria component statements for the period under audit amounted to N6,422,596,646,680.26.
“Department of Petroleum Resources collected the sum of N733,054,301,173.04 but paid a net figure of N706,283,397,141.80 to the federation account after deducting excess proceeds on the royalty of N26,770,904,031.24.
“The total amount of N2,653,810,173,226.72 was generated by the FIRS for the period under audit; however, the actual amount paid into the federation account was N2,457,272,701,077.09 after deducting N196,537,472,149.63 being the total excess proceeds on royalty.
“These collecting agencies made deductions from the revenue collected by them. This act contravenes the provisions of Section 162 (1) of the 1999 constitution which stipulate that ‘The federation shall maintain a special account to be called the federation account’ into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the government of the federation’.
“This has been a regular subject of my reports which has been ignored over the years.”
