Nigeria loses ₦16.25tn to oil theft annually, says NEITI

According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigeria has lost about N16.25 trillion due to oil theft in the country.

The statement was made by NEITI Executive Secretary, Ogbonnaya Orji, in a report to the Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Bamidele Salam, during an interactive session in Abuja.

Orji further alleged that consecutive administrations have spent $74.386 billion on fuel subsidies since 2011.

He stated that NEITI compiles the actual amount paid as subsidies on a yearly basis, based on data gathered and signed off on by industry operators and other stakeholders.

According to him, the NEITI discovered more than $8.3 billion in unremitted earnings by some privately owned oil companies and government-controlled organisations that was not paid into the Federation Account.

Orji stated that the agency is collaborating with various law enforcement agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practises and Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), to recover funds from the government’s coffers.

“I have here, for instance, revenues we have earned from oil and gas since 1999. We also have here all the subsidy payments made. Since 2005 when it became a scandal, we began to collect the data. We began to ask question on subsidy and as at 2021, the country had paid, $74.386 billion on subsidy,” Orji said.

“We have breakdown of what was paid each year. We have also got a conversion of what that can possibly translate to.”

He went on to also inform the gathering that $16.25 billion (approximately N16.25 trillion) was lost to oil theft in Nigeria, stating that the data was obtained from data collected from various sign-offs by operators and government agencies.

“In the course of this job, we have incentivized a lot of recoveries for the government because between what is paid and what was recovered, a lot of money in foreign exchange developed wings. Company A will say we paid $1 million and you go to the account of the receiving agency and you find out that either half of that money was not received or more is received more than what was paid because of poor record keeping and carelessness.” Orji stated this during the session.