NEITI to Activate MoUs with NFIU, EFCC to Recover N900bn Outstanding Oil Sector Debts

NEITI to Activate MoUs with NFIU, EFCC to Recover N900bn Outstanding Oil Sector Debts

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) may activate its recent Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to recover an outstanding sum of N900 billion owed government by the oil sector.

The Dr Ogbonnaya Orji-led organisation has in the last couple of months begun collaboration with anti-graft agencies to ramp up collections from some companies operating in the industry.

Speaking in Abuja during an interview with journalists, Orji explained that the audit report had earlier resulted in the recovery of N1.5 trillion outstanding debts from taxes and fees from oil companies.

But he stressed that there was yet an outstanding N900 billion adding that NEITI may activate its MoUs to ensure full recovery.

He recalled that the 2019 NEITI oil and gas audit report had revealed that 77 companies were owing oil Value Added Tax (VAT), Withholding Tax, Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) totaling about N2.6 trillion.

Orji added that prior to the NEITI pronouncement on the N2.6 trillion debt, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) recovered $810 million while the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NURPC) was able to collect $1.416 billion amounting to $2.226 billion.

According to him, between 2021 and so far in 2022, the agency worked with the National Assembly review committee and pushed the debtors to pay more. From this, he explained that FIRS got $662.9 million while NUPRC got $913.5 million, reaching $1.576 billion or N600 billion.

NEITI said the outstanding taxes and fees from the oil companies remained at about $2.674 billion with $18.98 million for FIRS and $2.655 billion for NUPRC, which is an expected N1.07 trillion for Nigeria.

He explained that this would be updated in the 2021 report planned for release this year.

The industry extractive industries watchdog conducts is empowered to conduct financial, physical as well as process audit yearly to probe cash flows in Nigeria’s extractive sector.

In the 2019 NEITI report, it stated that 77 oil and gas companies owed the federal government over N2.6 trillion in petroleum profit tax, company income tax, education tax, value added tax, withholding tax, royalties, penalties and concession on rentals.

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