Human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), has urged an anti-corruption advocacy group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, to collaborate with the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to help the Federal Government recover alleged unremitted sums of$22.06bn and N481bn from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Falana said he was making the call in view of the allegation on Monday by NEITI that the NNPC failed to remit the funds into the Federation Account.

The SAN also urged SERAP and other civil society organisations to take an interest in a judgment of the Supreme Court “which ordered the Federal Government to recover revenues lost to oil giants under the Deepshore Offshore Inland Production Contract Act over 18 years.”

He argued that rather than going to China to beg for a loan to build infrastructure, the Federal Government should concentrate on how it would recover not less than $94bn unremitted oil revenues.

Falana made the call on Tuesday in Lagos while speaking during the public presentation of a new report by SERAP.

The report was titled, “Impact of Non-payment of Capital Gains Tax and Other Levies in the Oil and Gas Sector on the Socio-Economic Development of the Country.”

In the report, SERAP lamented that the failure of the Federal Government to charge Capital Gains Tax on $8bn worth of oil and gas assets sold between 2005 and 2015 had fuelled poverty and underdevelopment in the country.

It, therefore, called on the Nigerian authorities “to urgently recover any possible past unpaid dues, and for improvement in the collection and estimation of capital gains tax in the Nigerian oil sector.”

Reacting to the call on Tuesday, Falana urged SERAP and other CSOs to get involved in the recovery efforts.

He said, “The minister of State in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, last year, revealed that the amount not recovered (from NNPC) was $60bn, due to the non-implementation of the law.

“NIMASA, another agency of the government, has established that oil stolen and discharged in one port in the United States in three years has been valued at $12.7bn.

“So, if the said sum of over $94bn is paid into the Federation Account Nigeria does not have to go to China begging for loans for infrastructural development.” – Punch

– Nov. 1, 2018 @ 10:35 GMT |