The Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusihas written an article on the funds which allegedly went missing from the coffers of theNigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC).
The article, published on May 13, 2015, on the Financial Times website, addresses the report of the audit conducted into the NNPC's accounts by PriceWaterhouseCooper.
Sanusi, a former Central bank Governor, was suspended from the position in February 2014 after he raised alarm about the missing funds.
Here are seven important things he said in the Financial Times article:
You can suspend a man, but you cannot suspend the truth.
Contrary to the claims of petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the audit report does not exonerate the NNPC.
The report establishes that the gap between the company's oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bn and it goes into detail about the NNPC's account of how it used that money, which raises serious questions about the legality of the state oil company's conduct.
The auditors say a significant part of the unremitted funds is supposed to have gone towards a kerosene subsidy that had been stopped two and a half years earlier by the late President Umaru Yar'Adua. Evidence disclosed in the report suggests this is a sideshow.
Nigerians paid 120-140 naira a litre of kerosene, far more than the supposed subsidised price of 50 naira. Yet the state oil company withheld $3.4bn to pay for a subsidy that in effect did not exist.
Of the $18.5bn in revenues that the state oil company did not send to the government, about $12.5bn appears by my calculations to have been diverted. And this relates only to a random 19-month period, not the five-year term of Mr Jonathan, the outgoing president.
Nigerians did not vote for an amnesty for anyone. The lines of investigation suggested by this audit need to be pursued. Any officials found responsible for involvement in this apparent breach of trust must be charged.
