The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions on Wednesday in Abuja resolved to conduct an investigative public hearing on an alleged missing $60.3 billion Petroleum Profit Tax and royalty revenues.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) have been mentioned in the alleged missing money. The organizations have rebuffed invitations to appear before the committee which is investigating a petition on the matter.
The petitioner, Mr Fidelis Uzonwani, a chartered accountant with Synergy Resources Nigeria Limited told members of the committee that “from 2004 to 2016, over $60 billion of PPT and royalty revenues were unaccounted for by the CBN.”
He said further: “We discovered that something was going wrong and we approached the CBN to take actions to remedy those infractions but it remained adamant probably that is how they benefit from the system.
“They have engaged in forgery and when in 2017 they were asked to produce the documents they made available to the Federal Government since 2006, they started manipulating them with computers.
“We discovered that the CBN adds naira and dollar into one column to arrive at a total. Even to the extent of taking money outside an account to a secret account and returning same at the end of the month after earning secret interests.”
The Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Uzoma Nkem-Abonta (Abia, PDP) expressed dissatisfaction over the failure of CBN and FIRS to appear before the committee to defend themselves on the alleged infractions.
“Because the CBN, FIRS and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) have repeatedly failed to appear before this committee, we will be left with no option than to deem it fit to work with materials before us.
“We will conduct a public hearing on the matter and we will compel them to appear because what we are trying to do is to have a situation where all the loopholes for leakages are blocked,” he said.