Falana Seeks Prosecution of Oil Firms for Unremitted Revenue

Chineme Okafor in Abuja

Constitutional lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), has advised the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) to commence legal proceedings against oil and gas industry firms for their non-remittance to the federal government’s purse all outstanding revenues due to it from their respective operations.

Falan, in a statement from the NEITI, stated that there are legally recognised ways the transparency agency can explore to recover unremitted revenues due to the federation as highlighted in a number of its oil and gas audit reports.

He said the transparency and accountability agency could report indicted companies and groups to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for criminal diversion of public funds as disclosed in its reports.

He also explained that on the alternative, the NEITI could invoke its powers of prosecution and institute civil proceedings in appropriate courts against the affected companies and groups for the recovery of these funds.

Falana, identified Section 3(f) of the NEITI Act 2007, as a tool to carry out its duties.
According to the NEITI statement, this section imposes a duty on NEITI to monitor and ensure that all payments due to the federal government from all extractive industries, including taxes, royalties, dividends, are duly made.”

The statement equally explained that a policy brief earlier released by NEITI had focused on unremitted funds from oil and gas firms in the country.

Similarly, other series of NEITI oil and gas sector audits showed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) failed to remit over $21.78 billion and N316.1 billion to the Federation Account.

In that policy brief, the unremitted funds included $1.7 billion as outstanding revenue from a total of $1.8 billion as a result of the transfer of eight oil mining leases from Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC).

NEITI’s policy brief also noted that another $2.2 million was not remitted from four other oil leases from the joint venture managed by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) and transferred to the NPDC.

Other unremitted revenues, the NEITI policy brief included about $148.3 million paid as cash calls on the transferred oil leases, in addition to about $1.5 billion legacy liabilities as well as about $15.8 billion that accrued as dividends paid by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) between 2000 and 2014.
NEITI had however urged the government to take steps to recover the unremitted oil revenue from the NNPC and other companies.

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