The joint Senate committee on Finance and National Planning on Friday ordered officials of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) to reappear before it over unremitted two trillion Naira, saying the agency must be led by its Director, Sarki Auwalu.
According to the Senate committee, the petroleum agency remitted only N44.5 billion out of the N2.4 trillion it generated in 2019 into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
The Chairman of the committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, ordered the agency to reappear before it unfailingly on Tuesday.
The committee also demanded for DPR’s records of internally generated revenues in 2019 and projections for 2021.
The lawmakers described the submission as unacceptable.
Speaking, Adeola said: “For this committee to do a proper and thorough job, comprehensive records of such budget performances must be made available latest by Monday next week, upon which your director and other top management staff will appear before us again on Tuesday next week.
“Detailed proposals for revenue generation by the agency for 2021-2022 must be included in the expected comprehensive records.”
Efforts by the Petroleum Resources agency ’s Head of Finance and Accounts, Mrs Lilian Ufondu, to explain the wide margin further angered the lawmakers.
According to Mrs. Ufondu, out of the N2.4tn generated in 2019, N88 billion was removed as four per cent cost of collection.
She explained further that N5.72 billion was remitted while the balance was used for overhead.
The chairman and members of the committee demanded explanations on what happened to the over two trillion balance.
The lawmakers considered it unsatisfactory as Ufondu only mentioned overhead and operational costs without specific figures attached to them.
She however said that as of July 2020, DPR had generated N1.13 trillion.
Meanwhile, DPR projected N3.4 trillion as revenues generation for 2021 and equally noted that N139 billion would be deducted as four per cent collection fee.
