The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has so far paid N1.43 trillion as fuel subsidy for 2011 consumption, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said yesterday.
The minister said a total of N1.43 trillion has been paid as at October 2011, saying “we still expect to make additional payments from receipts but that is not going to be much.”
She disclosed this yesterday while testifying at the public hearing by the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on the investigation of the subsidy regime.
When asked by the chairman of the committee, Rep Faruk Lawan (PDP, Kano) to disclose who authorises NNPC to deduct subsidy funds at source from the Federation Account and also the extra-budgetary spending of over N1 trillion in 2011 as subsidy payments, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said, “this was a practice I met and I am afraid I can’t tell you.”
Faruk also wondered why government officials issued contradicting figures of 2011 subsidy funds.
Okonjo-Iweala said contrary to general belief that Nigeria was broke, the country was financially buoyant, saying subsidy was not removed because the country was not financially doing well but to avoid piling up debt.
“The country can run but five years from now if we continue to borrow we will pile up so much domestic debt to finance the budget which will mortgage the future of our children,” she argued.
The finance minister revealed that the government has begun the process of recovering internally generated revenues from agencies which were not remitted to the Federation Account.
She also disclosed that the government had recovered N179 billion as taxes by private sector.
The coordinating economic minister however, admitted that there was nothing wrong with subsidy on petrol “but the bulk of the resources is going to those that were better off.”
On reports that she solely pushed for subsidy removal, the finance minister said, “it was a government decision and I am part of the government. I did not give Mr. President advice to remove subsidy this is not Ngozi’s decision. My name is clean because I didn’t come back to perpetuate bad things. I will not allow people to load on me what I didn’t do.”
The total amount of money expended on petroleum products subsidy in 2011 according to her is well over N1.5 trillion.
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