Nigeria’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI has revealed that the country lost N16.25 trillion to crude oil theft.

This revelation came in Abuja with the submission of a report on the $74.386 billion spent on fuel subsidy by successive administrations since 2011 to the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts.

Chairman of the committee, Bamidele Salam, received the report from the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Ogbonnaya Orji. 

An interactive session that followed led to more disclosure from Orji about findings in the course of the job and the collated data.

“In that report alone, over $8.3 billion were unremitted funds on the part of some government agencies and companies. Our concern is that this is at a time when the government is going borrowing. So, we bring this information with incisive and empirical information and data with evidence and table it.”

The Executive Secretary of NEITI also disclosed accountability issues discovered in the process.

  “We have incentivized a lot of recoveries for the government because between what is paid and what was recovered, a lot of money in foreign exchange developed wings. Company 

“A will say we paid $1 million and you go to the account of the receiving agency and you find out that either half of that money was not received or more is received than what was paid because of poor record keeping and carelessness.” He said.

 What Next?

The Executive Secretary said NEITI is working with the antigraft agencies in the country – the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offenses Commission, and the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit to address the situation.