$8bn Dividends: Senate Tasks NLNG To Provide Evidence Of Payment To NNPC

The Senate on Thursday, January 21 directed the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) company to provide details of an alleged payment of about 8 billion dollars to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Senator Akpan Bassey

This was disclosed  when the NLNG briefed the Senate Committee on Gas and the Senate Committee on Niger Delta on developments in the area.

The alleged payment was contained in a report by the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

Sen. Bassey Akpan, the Chairman of the Committee on Gas said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had in its budget estimates for 2016, stated that there was no payment of dividend from the NLNG.

The senate also gave an ultimatum of one week to show evidence of tax payment and dividends since the end of the company’s tax holiday in 2009.

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Akpan who gave the one week directive gave the directive when the MD of NLNG could not give specific details of the amount paid out so far as taxes and dividend.

“MD we need a documentary evidence of the taxes that you have paid and the dividends that you have paid from the end of your tax holiday till date.

“We must be able to substantiate the argument by NEITI that about $8 billion dividends has not been transferred to the Federation Account: the interest of Nigeria is reflected in this..A cumulative return on investment amounting to about $88 billion you have remitted to NNPC but it has not been transferred to the Federation Account.

“This can be justified by the content of what you told us here that in 2015 alone you paid $1 billion as dividends to NNPC so we need a documentary evidence that this money has left your position to NNPC so we can take it up with NNPC immediately.

“According to NNPC you have not paid a dime, there must be a directive on the account to pay to. So you should submit to the secretariat all the details within one week. The President needs money to perform and we must help the President at the National Assembly to get the money,” he said.

Akpan also provided evidence of the 33 billion naira the company claimed to have paid to the federal government as well. He said that the evidence of the $2.1 billion paid in 2015 should also be provided while also querying the company’s N197 billion projection for 2016.

“Your presentation states that your projection for 2016 is 197 billion naira, we need to understand how you arrived at that with dwindling prices of gas since you say your prices are tied to crude prices.

“Also how you intend to achieve a budget of 265 billion naira for 2016 when you paid nothing in 2015 because these are all part of governments revenue projection for 2016.

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“If you add up what should come from NLNG is adds up to almost 500 billion naira so we need to know how you arrived at this and we also want evidences to prove all these figures assigned to you,” he said.

In his remarks, Babs Omotowa, the Managing Director of the Nigerian LNG  defended the company saying that the evidence of remittance will be made available to the Senate.

He also stressed that evidence will be provided as it is not in the place of the company to determine what their shareholders do with funds.

“I am no more a Nigerian than the NNPC is, as much as I am Nigerian, they are also Nigerian so we cannot take upon ourselves NNPC issues.

“We will give it to you as you said, NEITI has said it and confirmed it and it is very clear in their report so the same evidence we will provide to you,” he said.

However, the committee gave international Oil Companies (IOCs) one week to submit details of gas flaring as well as the environment impact assessment of oil exploration in the Delta region of Nigeria.

 

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