Forensic audit of NNPC underway – Minister

A report by the office of Nigeria’s Auditor-General had earlier indicted NNPC for alleged misappropriation of funds and diversion of revenue meant for the Federation in 2021.

Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, on Wednesday announced that a forensic audit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is underway.

Mr Edun made the disclosure at an Investors’ Forum held on the sidelines of the World Bank/IMF meetings holding in Washington D.C.

Earlier in the month, President Bola Tinubu sacked the board of the NNPC including its former Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, and board chairman Pius Akinyelure.

Mr Kyari was first appointed NNPC chief by former President Muhammadu Buhari but was reappointed in 2023 by President Tinubu.

The president consequently appointed a new board including a new GCEO.

“The new 11-man board has Engineer Bashir Bayo Ojulari as the Group CEO and Ahmadu Musa Kida as non-executive chairman,” the presidency said in a statement.

The NNPC later announced the appointment of a new eight-member senior management team.

On Wednesday, Mr Edun told a gathering of investors, fund managers and financial experts in Washington that the government also plans to reconcile the books of the oil company to reposition it for efficient operations and service delivery.

“The NNPC needs to come to the table with more dollar revenue,” the minister said in reaction to efforts by the government to revamp oil production in the face of the global uncertainty heightened by the tariff war between the United States and other economies of the world, most notably China.

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported that the office of Nigeria’s Auditor-General had earlier indicted NNPC for alleged misappropriation of funds and diversion of revenue meant for the Federation in 2021.

The indictments were contained in the 2021 Auditor-General’s annual report published in November 2024. The 558-page report was recently submitted to the National Assembly as Nigeria’s Constitution provides.

The report showed a troubling blend of questions bordering on misappropriation of funds involving the NNPCL. In one case, the auditor general indicted the state-owned oil firm of unauthorised deductions of N82.9 billion from federation revenue for refinery rehabilitation.

The NNPCL also got knocks from the report for its “irregular deductions of funds from domestic crude sales at source,” which the auditor general said was a breach of the Nigerian Constitution and Financial Regulations (3106 and 3129) 2009 in respect of economy of expenditure.