“You can suspend a man, but you can’t suspend the truth,” Emir responds to NNPC audit report

Sanusi, a former Central Bank Governor, said that the audit report had indicted the NNPC of misappropriating funds despite insinuations by Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke that the report had vindicated the corporation.

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  Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has responded to the recent audit conducted into the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) by PriceWaterhouseCooper.

  Sanusi, a former Central Bank Governor, said that the audit report had indicted the NNPC of misappropriating funds despite insinuations by Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke that the report had vindicated the corporation.

  The Emir made his observations via an article published on Financial Times on Wednesday, May 13, 2015.

  The article reads:

  “Just over a year ago President Goodluck Jonathan suspended me from my position as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria after I questioned an estimated $20bn shortfall in oil revenues due to the treasury from the state oil company.”

  “As I said then, you can suspend a man, but you cannot suspend the truth. The publication last month of a PwC audit into the “missing billions” brings us a step closer to it.”

  “Contrary to the claims of petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the audit report does not exonerate the NNPC. It establishes that the gap between the company’s oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bn. And it goes into detail about the NNPC’s account of how it used that money, which raises serious questions about the legality of the state oil company’s conduct.”

  “The auditors say a significant part of the unremitted funds is supposed to have gone towards a kerosene subsidy that had been stopped two and a half years earlier by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. His decree never appeared in the official gazette, leading some to question whether it ever had legal force.”

  “Evidence disclosed in the report suggests this is a sideshow. The executive secretary of the agency charged with administering subsidies confirmed that, acting on Yar’Adua’s orders, it had ceased granting subsidies on kerosene. There was no appropriation for such a subsidy in the 2012 or 2013 budgets.”

  “Throughout all this, Nigerians paid 120-140 naira a litre of kerosene, far more than the supposed subsidised price of 50 naira. Yet the state oil company withheld $3.4bn to pay for a subsidy that in effect did not exist. I have consistently held that this was a scam that violated the constitution and siphoned off money from the treasury.”

  “Of the $18.5bn in revenues that the state oil company did not send to the government, about $12.5bn appears by my calculations to have been diverted. And this relates only to a random 19-month period, not the five-year term of Mr Jonathan, the outgoing president.”

  “Nigerians did not vote for an amnesty for anyone. The lines of investigation suggested by this audit need to be pursued. Any officials found responsible for involvement in this apparent breach of trust must be charged.”

  Sanusi was suspended from his position as CBN governor in February 2014 after he alleged that the NNPC had failed to remit $20 billion in oil funds.

  The allegation however led President Goodluck Jonathan to authorize the audit.

  The full report was released on Jonathan’s orders on April 27, 2015, after President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari declared that he would still probe the allegation of missing funds.