THE civil society and other stakeholders have described the latest twist in the missing $49.8 billion oil fund as a demonstration of gross incompetence by Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. They also demand his immediate resignation, while urging the Federal Government to set up a judicial commission of enquiry to probe details of the transactions and related documents.

Last week, Sanusi admitted before the Senate Committee on Finance that his claim that the fund was not remitted was an error. He disclosed that the shortfall in the remittance was $12 billion.

Bamidele Aturu, a human rights practitioner, noted that the admittance either implies that Sanusi has no adequate knowledge of what his job requires or that he has compromised the integrity the office of the CBN governor. He described the twist as tragic and a signal that the country’s economy is managed by people who are ignorant of the demands of their jobs.

Aturu said Sanusi ought to have tendered a letter of resignation within 24 hours he admitted the “grave error.” This, he said, is necessary because the goof either means he is not thorough enough or that there was unholy intervention that forced him to retrieve his statement, which is not in the interest of sound economic management.

With the new position, the lawyer concluded, the Federal Government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Finance Ministry, as well as the CBN have failed in their responsibilities to manage the economy.

“The people have been ripped off; the economy has been mismanaged; we don’t have competent managers of the economy. It appears to me that there was an attempt to do damage control. The government should set up a judicial commission of enquiry to probe the missing fund. We must take it away from the domain of the CBN and the Ministry of Finance while the documents are scrutinised publicly,” he demanded.

He said the high-powered probe is required to ascertain the authenticity of the alarm originally raised by Sanusi, saying the latest soft-pedal tactics cannot be relied upon. He wondered why the CBN, with its many professionals of diverse backgrounds could not be depended upon to give the country a flawless account of transaction that is based on simple arithmetic.

Beyond the debate on whether the money is missing or otherwise, Aturu said Nigerians deserve to know where it is warehoused or what it is used for, as they cannot be bamboozled with mere documents.

Besides, Aturu is just one among millions of Nigerians who are getting bored by the usual altercation over mismanagement of oil fund. He is asking the government to rather utilise the resources to address social deprivation that pervades every part of the country.



Similarly, Liborous Oshoma, a public affairs analyst, said the CBN governor displayed “gross incompetence” when he admitted that such sensitive information was erroneously transmitted. He said Sanusi, as chief treasurer of the country, is expected to be well informed about how money comes and leaves the Federation Account, noting that “he might not know everything but he has a team of expert to work with.

“Everybody with deep knowledge about the industry knows that there are modalities for collecting revenues in the oil and gas. The avenues are equity crude, royalties, taxation and others. All these are statutorily collected by different bodies: royalties go to the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), while equity is the only portion the NNPC collects and remit to the Federation Account.”

Oshoma observed that a more dutiful CBN should have been informed about history of the collection and remittance. He said Nigerians bother less about the $49.8 billion since Sanusi raised the alarm because corruption has eaten deep into the system.

He said the allegations raised by Sanusi are not the kind that should be overlooked notwithstanding the whistleblower’s change of position.

“It is not enough for Sanusi to say that the letter was not a concluding of the investigation. It is a mild way of saying he has made a mistake and that the country should forget it. We should look beyond politics or sentiments and demand to know how money enters and goes out of the Federation Account. This should be the concern of every Nigerian,” he said.

The question is whether the last statement on the issue has changed the public perception that massive fraud is still being perpetrated in the petroleum sector, notwithstanding government’s pledge to curb corruption. It may not really make any difference after all. Oshoma said Nigerians only take the disclosure as another trick to placate the public.

He said Sanusi should have thought about the impact his earlier revelation would have on the public before raising the alarm publicly. This, he said, is “because once you make pronouncement, it is difficult to retrieve it. The general opinion is that agencies involved must have reached a compromise.

“The initial response of CBN’s spokesman was that he could not admit or deny the letter but that they just realised that money was not coming into the account the way it should. That was too elementary to come from a respected organisation like the CBN. If we want to expose corruption in an agency of government, we should do thorough job so that the story will be consistent and believable. Only God knows how many of such mistakes were made in the past to which the public was not privy.”



Former President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), Mazi Okechukwu Unegbu, who has always faulted the manner CBN manages information, said Sanusi’s turnaround only demonstrates the view those who manage the country’s economy hold towards their offices. He said the twist of event, he described as shocking, is testimony that the leaders are not still ready to approach the economy with seriousness.

According to him, the manner Sanusi has reduced such sensitive issue to “a joke” only points to a country that foolishly tells the world that it is not ready to be taken seriously. He also linked the misinformation to the country’s inability to keep proper data.

After admitting the error, Sanusi pleaded with the Ahmed Makarfi-led committee to give him some time to reconcile figures with other relevant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

Sanusi said: “I repeat…that we did not see the letter as a conclusion of our investigation but an invitation to investigate. So, the conclusion that $49.8 billion was missing was wrong even though we had the allegation that it was not remitted.

“I found it very unfortunate it was leaked to the press and the answer is ‘Yes’, the CBN Governor did send that letter with those contents. By way of those contents, the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and the government were very much concerned over the years at the very low rate of accretion to the reserves in spite of very high level of oil prices and in particular, depletion of excess crude account in spite of what seems to be very high level of oil sales.

“Now, in investigating and trying to understand where those leakages were, our attention was drawn to a huge difference between what appeared to be export of crude made by the NNPC and amount repatriated into the crude equity account of the Federal Government.

“The numbers were about $65 billion exported by NNPC and about $15 billion repatriated to Federation Account out of that. Now, in line with our duty as the banker of the government, we had the responsibility of alerting the President and request a thorough investigation of this matter.

“Since then, a lot has happened. We have had the Minister of Finance, Minister of Petroleum Resources, Central Bank, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) set up technical team and have started a process of reconciliation and there has been a lot of progress in that process.

“That progress has been the provision of Monetary Policy (MP) by Monetary Policy Committee officials to show that even though they did ship that amount in question, which is little more than $67 billion, about $24 billion was actually not their crude but crude shipped on behalf of third parties like oil companies, tax in crude and also for third party financing and that already addressed half of the amount.

“So, the second half is the issue around domestic crude lifting of $28 billion from which we feel there is a shortfall. There is a general consensus among us on this even though the amount has been disputed. For us in Central Bank, there is a shortfall of $12 billion.

“Now, we still are in the process of trying to reconcile that number and we have not even started talking of the sales, the export sales tax, which is about $2 billion, which will come after the sales tax and the Finance Ministry has told us that even before now, there is ongoing negotiation and discussion with NNPC ad-hoc committee and these numbers have always been discussed at the level of commissioners of finance.”

Meanwhile, Coordinating Minister for the Economy/ Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, informed the committee that only $10.8 billion (not $12 billion as admitted by Sanusi) was yet to be reconciled.

“What we have done so far shows that for the $49.8 billion, and that’s the first point we want to make, there are some misconceptions or misunderstandings that led to this number and we have been able to come to the conclusion that we can account for this amount,” Okonjo-Iweala stated.

The committee, therefore, directed the CBN and relevant MDAs to conduct comprehensive reconciliation and report back in writing as soon as the process was concluded.

In the past weeks when the matter has been in the public domain, NNPC had engaged the apex bank, accusing Sanusi of playing politics with the claim that the corporation failed to remit the money into the Federation Account from January 2012 to July 2013.

Its Group Managing Director, Andrew Yakubu, insisted the alarm was targeted at ridiculing his team, adding that it was a “political instrument for the 2015 general elections.”

Sanusi, like many other Nigerians, had in recent times condemned the leadership of the NNPC over poor oversight of the oil sector and mismanagement.