Hector Igbikiowubo
Lagos — The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has finally put a number to the black hole that has swallowed Nigeria’s oil wealth for years. In its 2025 audited financial report, the company casually disclosed that it spent a mind-boggling N11.2 trillion to “protect the country’s oil and gas assets on behalf of the Federal Government.”
Let that figure sink in. N11.2 trillion. Not billion. Trillion.
For a country that is not at war, not under invasion, and not battling a foreign adversary for its oil fields, what exactly was NNPC protecting oil assets from that cost more than one-and-a-half times its entire declared profit for the year?
The company declared N7.2 trillion in profit after tax and N34.5 trillion in revenue. Yet it claims to have spent N11.2 trillion on security alone. That means for every N3 the company made as profit, it spent nearly N5 on security. In any serious oil company anywhere in the world, security is a cost element, not the dominant cost centre that dwarfs profit. This is not business; it is an absurdity.
Security For What, From Whom?
The language in the audited report is deliberately opaque: “other receivables from federation… advance payments to the federation and costs incurred to secure the country’s oil and gas assets” under “an approved framework between the federal government and the group.”
What framework? Approved by whom? When was it approved by the National Assembly? What are the line items that make up N11.2 trillion in security expenses in 12 months?
Nigeria’s entire defence budget for 2025 – for the Army, Navy, Air Force, fighting Boko Haram, banditry, and IPOB combined – was less than N4.9 trillion. NNPC alone is claiming it spent more than double the national defence budget just to secure pipelines and wellheads.
If the Nigerian Armed Forces can attempt to secure the entire territorial integrity of 200 million people for less than N5 trillion, how does a single company spend N11.2 trillion securing oil assets?
The Subsidy Shell Game
The report contains another sleight of hand. NNPC proudly states that no “energy security expense” – the sanitized term for petrol subsidy – was “recognised” in 2025, compared to N7.13 trillion in 2024. But in the next breath, it admits to a defrayed energy security cost of N8.9 trillion carried over from 2024, which was conveniently “netted off against royalties, tax, and dividends” due to the Federation in September 2025.
So, Nigerians are still paying for subsidy, just through accounting netting. Royalties, taxes, and dividends that should have gone into the Federation Account to fund hospitals, schools, and roads were simply erased to cover NNPC’s past subsidy bill.
Now, with subsidy supposedly gone, a new monster has appeared: N11.2 trillion for security. Nigerians must ask: Is “energy security cost” simply being reborn as “oil asset protection cost”? Is this the new nomenclature for opaque deductions from the Federation?
The Questions NNPC Must Answer
1. Publish the Framework: Nigerians deserve to see the full “approved framework” that allows NNPC to spend N11.2 trillion of federation money without appropriation.
2. The Breakdown: Who were the security contractors paid? How much went to private security firms owned by ex-militants? How much to the military and NSCDC? How much is administrative overhead disguised as security?
3. The Audit: Who audited these security expenses? A receipt for N11.2 trillion cannot be justified by a single line item called “costs incurred to secure assets.”
4. The Result: For N11.2 trillion, did oil theft stop? No. Did pipeline vandalism stop? No. The NUPRC still reports massive crude losses. So, what did we secure?
The NNPC has morphed from an oil company into a parallel government with its own security budget larger than the nation’s, its own spending framework outside the National Assembly, and its own accounting method of netting off what it owes Nigerians.
If NNPC can spend N11.2 trillion protecting oil assets and still declare a N7.2 trillion profit, it means the real revenue was close to N45 trillion before this dubious deduction. That N11.2 trillion belongs to the Federation. It belongs to the Nigerian people.
Until NNPC opens its books and explains how it spent more protecting oil than the Nigerian military spends protecting Nigeria, Nigerians should treat this N11.2 trillion claim not as an expense, but as a heist in broad daylight.
