- The National Economic Council’s ad-hoc committee on the management of the Excess Crude Account proceeds and accruals into the Federation Account on Thursday said it had hired two firms, the KPMG and the PriceWaterHouseCooper, to audit the accounts of all Federal Government’s revenue-earning agencies.
- Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, who chairs the committee, disclosed this to State House correspondents after a meeting of the committee at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
- Oshiomhole was joined at the briefing by other members of the committee such as Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State; Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State; and Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe State.
- He named the agencies whose accounts would be audited as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Central Bank of Nigeria, Securities Exchange Commission, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Department of Petroleum Resources, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigeria Customs Service, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Federal Ministry of Finance and Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, among others.
- He said before the decision was taken, the committee had earlier in the day listened to presentations from government agencies expected to be remitting revenue into the Federation Account in line with the Constitution and the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation on the investigation currently being carried out.
He said, “We have decided to hire two audit firms, KPMG and PwC, to carry out the audit of all the agencies and government will decide what to do. We are doing this because we are sitting governors.
“The interaction has been quite interesting. We have heard from the agencies and they understand what the issues are. Many of them are new by virtue of the recent changes. We are convinced that the audit firms will do a professional job and help the government. The job is going on quietly.”
- He said the committee expected a more thorough job because the PwC had admitted that the audit it carried out on the NNPC, under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, was done under a political environment that was not favourable.
