Founder of IBTC Stanbic Bank, Atedo Peterside, has challenged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to clarify allegations that it dipped its fingers in the federation account in order to announce a profit of N287bn.

The PUNCH on Friday reported that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had announced a net profit by the NNPC for the first time in its 44-year history.

The president had said, “I am pleased to announce the declaration of profit after tax of N287bn in year 2020 by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. This is sequel to the completion of the statutory annual audit exercise for year 2020.

“The NNPC losses were reduced from N803bn in year 2018 to N1.7bn in year 2019 and the eventual declaration of net profit in year 2020 for the first time in its 44-year history.”

In a tweet on Sunday, Peterside said, “There is an allegation that NNPC dipped their fingers in the Federation Cookie Jar in order to announce bumper 2020 profits; they should come clean and publish details of all dividends received by them and tell us which ones they recently diverted from the Federation to themselves.”

On 19 April 2021, it was reported that the total revenue generated by the NNPC from crude oil and gas exports plunged by 45.98 per cent in 2020 amid the COVID-19-induced collapse in price and demand.

The report said Nigeria’s revenue from the exports of crude oil and gas fell to $2.62bn in 2020 from $4.85bn in 2019.

It added that proceeds from the sale of domestic crude oil and gas also dropped to N1.54tn in 2020 from N1.57tn in 2019.

Reacting to Peterside’s tweet, @DrJoshObi said, “I read a while ago that the FG recently approved some billions for turnaround maintenance, maybe they recorded it as ‘inflow’.”

@ayotula said, “I knew something was wrong, NNPC for the first time declared profit and next says it wants to sell shares.

“I knew it was stage managed because of the provisions of the PIA. It is expected that NNPC would have made profits for some years before thinking of shares.”

@FAGalileo said, “PIA signed into law and the next big announcement is NNPC declaring profits for the first time in 44 years. Who is fooling who?

“The @NNPCgroup should publish the subsidiary and its activities that produced this huge profit margin. Or was this done for the 30 per cent frontier basin?”

The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Mele Kyari, had on Thursday night said the corporation was able to cut down its procurement costs by 30 per cent last year which helped it to post the N287bn profit.

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