The Auditor-General of the Federation, Anthony Ayine, has advised the Nigerian government to legalise its continuous maintenance of the Excess Crude Account, ECA.
The remarks were contained in the recently released annual report of the Auditor-General for the Federation on the accounts of the Federation of Nigeria for the year ended December 2016. The report is the most recent by the Auditor-General and was released last month.
Details of an on-going analysis of the report, obtained on Monday, shows that N361 billion (361,230,422,517.15) classified as royalty was deducted from total oil and gas revenue collected in 2016 before the balance was paid to the Federation Account. The sum, the report said, was in respect of the ECA.
“Examination of records and documents presented to the Audit Team in respect of the Excess Crude Account (ECA), revealed that a sum of N361,230,422,517.15 summarized below and classified as PPT/Royalty was deducted from total Oil and Gas revenue collected before the balance was paid to the Federation Account,” the report said.
“These deductions would appear to contravene the provisions of Section 162 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 which states that ‘The Federation shall maintain a special account to be called “The Federation Account” into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation’.”
The report said it was noted by the audit team that there was no legal authority for the creation of the Excess Crude oil/PPT/Royalty Account which is operating contrary to the provisions of the constitution. “Efforts made by the audit team to obtain legal authority for the creation of Excess crude Oil/PPT/Royalty Account proved abortive,” it added.
Mr Ayine noted that, “This observation has been consistently mentioned in my previous reports since the year 2007 without any positive action taken by the Federal Government to address this anomaly.”
The report recommended that relevant government agencies and Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee, FAAC, should initiate the process to legalise the creation of the Excess Crude Oil/PPT/Royalty Account through the National Assembly.
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