05 January 2014, Abuja – The full report of the forensic audit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) initiated in the wake of the allegation of missing funds belonging to the Federation Account in the NNPC custody may be ready later this month.
Sunday Vanguard learnt, at the weekend, that the interim report of the audit was already with the Auditor-General of the Federation.
The APC presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, had, in his acceptance to run in the February 14 election, accused the NNPC of corruption, saying it kept two sets of accounts.
Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole also alleged that $30 billion was missing from the Excess Crude Account.
The allegations came on the heels of the claim by a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Mallam Lamido Sanusi Lamido, that $20 billion was missing from the Federation Account.
NNPC Management raised strong objection to the allegation by Buhari describing it as “political mischief”.
The corporation stated that coming from a former Minister of Petroleum, under whose watch a similar allegation of $2.8 billion fraud was made in 1978, the APC presidential candidate’s statement amounted to political mischief as he was expected to have known better than to peddle beer palour gossip as facts.
The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs.Diezani Alison-Madueke, had, in early 2013, engaged PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PWC) for the forensic audit of the NNPC, well ahead of the Okonjo-Iweala inspired audit report on the national oil corporation. The report of that initial forensic assignment informed a lot of the management changes in the corporation.
– Vanguard