About 77 oil land and gas companies who are indebted to the Federal government to tune of N2.65trn may have no more place to hide, as President Muhammadu Buhari has given marching orders to anti-graft agencies to recover the money.
The agencies involved in the debt recovery are the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the Independence Corrupt Practices and Other Crimes Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Dr. Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, the NEITI Executive Secretary, revealed recently that the companies owed the amount through unremitted royalties, company income taxes, gas flaring fines, among others and that the amounts had been outstanding since the agency’s 2019 audit.
The order from President Buhari was revealed on Friday by NFIU Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Modibbo Tukur, in Abuja when his agency and NEITI signed an MOU.
Tukur said the actions of the 77 companies were unacceptable, noting they owed such amounts to the government, which was going about borrowing money.
He announced further that the President had directed the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, to coordinate the debt recovery process.
“And that (NEITI’s hard work) has led to some kind of fruition because I briefed him (President Muhammadu Buhari) this morning and you may not be aware of it,” Tukur said.
“This week, Mr President has approved officially all the recoveries to be done in this area. The minister of finance has been directed to set up a recovery panel with the EFCC, NEITI and NFIU in it and even NAPIMS and all the others.
“So, we are heading to maximum transparency. And there will be consolidation of data coming from NEITI, from NFIU and other agencies and there will be very clear reconciliation with the players and those regulating the sector. So, no more hiding of our national revenues. We all know what we are going through. Nobody wants to see the government borrow.”
“So we have the public accounts analysis and reporting. They analyse every single government account from local government to federal in this country. So if the oil company has said that we are paying, we will be the one to tell them whether they have paid and that’s what we’re doing.
“And we have the oil, maritime and petroleum sector analysis we also have the natural environment analysis. So this is also a natural environment issue where people hide and they do illegal mining, they exploit, then they do certain things and they move it out of the country without even the ministry of mining knowing and sometimes they go as far as using this sector to finance terrorism.
“We ran into so many cases, in this particular area when we’re were doing our analysis on terrorism.
“So, I think today is the day to congratulate you because we are taking off and you will see the results because now we have all seen the zeal.
“Because you are talking about N2.6 trillion, then we reported over $5 billion, not not paid in the area where the players are , which is the Niger Delta area. And then over N700 billion naira not paid, and in some cases companies receiving as agents and not even remitting.
” I think to achieve greater transparency in this area , it is good this time around to work with artificial intelligence, because if you are waiting for somebody to collect money and give you your own share, maybe it’s the day you are standing in front of God that he will pay you.
“Very soon both our teams will move to the ministry of finance, where we are going to sit down, call these companies and talk the real issues. We have walked the walk, so that the results will come in. And from that data you have and the one we have, the alert will start coming in very soon,” he said.