The Federal Government has finally initiated plans to enlist the services of an external auditor to verify the N2.7tn fuel subsidy claim by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited against the government, The PUNCH reports.
The yet-to-be-named auditor will assist the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation in determining the real amount owed by the government.
This development comes five months after the plan was proposed at the monthly Federation Allocation Accounts Committee meeting in April 2024. NNPC claimed an outstanding of N6tn but was reduced to N2.7tn after an initial audit by an audit firm, KPMG.
The PUNCH had reported that the audit would span from 2015 to 2021. Although the Director of Home Finance at the Ministry of Finance, Ali Mohammed, has always provided updates at every FAAC meeting, the latest development for an external auditor indicates that no concrete step has been taken to audit the claim.
On May 30, 2023, a few hours after the “subsidy is gone” declaration by President Bola Tinubu, the NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, told State House correspondents that the Federal Government still owed the firm the sum of N2.8tn spent on petrol subsidy.
