Foreign Forensic Auditors to Probe Jonathan Administration

 Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan

James Emejo in Abuja

The National Economic Council Ad hoc Committee on the Management of Excess Crude Account Proceeds and Accruals into the Federation Account on Thursday resolved to engage two international accounting companies to support them in the exercise.

The committee is made up of five state governors including Governors  Adams Oshiomhole (Edo),  Ibrahim Dankwanbo (Gombe),  Emmanuel Udom (Akwa Ibom), Akinwunmi Ambode (Lagos) and Nasir El Rufai (Kaduna).

At its inaugural meeting on Thursday, the committee had met with representatives of the revenue generating agencies including customs, Securities and Exchange Commission, Central Bank of Nigeria, and Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.

Representatives of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation,and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) were also present at the meeting.

Oshiomhole who is also the Chairman of the committee, said while announcing the outcome of its meeting that the committee decided to engage the services of the two accounting firms in order to thoroughly investigate how proceeds into the account was managed.

He said the names of the two accounting firms would be announced at its next meeting next week.

He added that the committee would be meeting with other revenue generating agencies in the petroleum industry including the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the  Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) among others next Thursday to get their inputs on how much was earned and remitted into the federation account.

The governor stated that the forensic audit would cover a five year period from January 2010 till June 2015 adding that the five year period may be extended to cover other previous years if such need arises.

He said: “Given our mandate, even if we are accountants, because we are city governors, we won’t have all the time to do forensic audit which this assignment entails. Therefore, we have agreed in line with our mandate to appoint two reputable international audit firms to carry out a thorough forensic audit not only of the NNPC which is the much talked about,but actually all the money that accrued to the federation account.

“We know now that although people talk of excess crude account, we have other revenues like bonuses, royalties and taxes part of which flow into the federation account depending on the budget estimate.”

He added: ”So we are taking a wholistic review of the entire process and looking at all the agencies that supposed to make contributions to fund the federation account.

“So we are convinced that by appointing audit firms, we will allow professionals to carry our this exercise so that it will be free from any political coloration and also will ensure that the outcome of the investigation will command interest and confidence of all the stakeholders and the Nigerian public.”

He said the outcome of the last forensic audit carried out by PricewaterHouseCoopers was not detailed enough as the accounting firm even admitted that it didn’t get adequate information to perform its audit exercise.
He said since President Muhammadu Buhari had given the directive that it would no longer be business as usual, all the books would be opened to enable the auditors perform their audit assignment effectively.