Tuesday, March 22, 2016

NNPC withheld $25bn from Nigeria over five years

Nigeria's state-owned oil company has failed to pay the government $25bn (£17.5bn) over five years, the nation's fiscal commission has said.

It includes $15bn that the nation's auditor general last week said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) failed to pay in 2014 alone.

Oil revenue accounts for roughly two-thirds of the government's funding.

President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to crack down on corruption since coming to office last May.

In a statement, the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), an independent body, said: "Records at the Commission's disposal indicate that between January 2011 and December 2015, the total indebtedness of NNPC to the Federation Account was 4.9 trillion naira."

Previous allegations

Under the current set-up, the NNPC hands over its oil revenue and money is then paid back based on a budget approved by parliament.

The state oil giant has been mired in corruption allegations and losing money for many years.

Last month, the government announced that the NNPC would be broken up into seven different companies.

A separate audit ordered under former President Goodluck Jonathan and carried out by global accountancy firm PwC, found that the NNPC had failed to pay the government $1.48bn between January 2012 and July 2013.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, but the economy has suffered because of the recent decline in the price of oil.

BBC


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Monday, March 21, 2016

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Video - Number of lions in Nigeria in sharp decline



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European Union to lift Ban on importing beans from Nigeria

Indications have emerged that the ban on exportation of beans produce to the European Union countries, EU, imposed on Nigeria by the European Food Safety Authority, will be lifted by June this year.

The development came weekend following the visit of a EU / Dutch team to the Central Laboratory of the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, in Lagos.

The team was in the country to inspect the procedures of the regulatory agency to ensure that future export of beans and other agricultural produce from Nigeria meet the standards of importing countries.

The European Food Safety Authority had in mid-2015 banned some agricultural produce which included beans from Nigeria, citing that the rejected beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per kilogramme to 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos pesticide, when the acceptable maximum residue limit is 0.01mg/kg.

Speaking during the visit, the Acting Director General, NAFDAC, Mrs. Yetunde Oni noted that the ban has no doubt resulted in a huge economic loss to Nigeria; although she insisted that the beans which resulted in the ban were smuggled out of the country and did not pass through her agency.

“The ban was placed about a year ago due to high insecticide residue in beans but let me sound a note of caution here that the beans that were rejected never passed through NAFDAC, they were beans produce smuggled out of the country.

“The ban has brought about a huge economic loss in the sense that Nigeria has large expanse of land, we have a lot of farmers that produce beans and the beans are not able to go out.”

She reiterated that agricultural produce that passes through the agency never gets rejected because of the rigorous process it goes through before certification.


Vanguard

Friday, March 18, 2016

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