The Spokesman of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Ndu Nghamadu has explained why the corporation has failed to make public the report of the recently completed up-to-date auditing of accounts. The Corporation in a statement issued on Sunday said it has completed the outstanding audit on its financial statements from the years 2011 to 2016, but it failed to make them public.
The statement disclosed that the audit backlog has since been formally approved by the NNPC board in line with extant laws governing the operations of the national oil company.
Speaking on why the Corporation has refused to make the report public by posting it on its website, Ughamadu said the NNPC Act does not require the corporation to make its audited accounts public but it will consider doing so and publishing them on the NNPC website.
Providing details, the NNPC spokesman said the Chief Financial Officer/Group Executive Director, Finance & Accounts of the corporation, Isiaka AbdulRazaq, said the delivery of the audited financial statements would help foster better relations with stakeholders and further promote transparency and accountability in the corporation.
AbdulRazaq was quoted as saying the drive to achieve the clean slate dated back to August 2015, when the current management of the finance & accounts directorate took over the mantle of leadership and inherited 65 unaudited financial statements for NNPC group corporate and its subsidiaries, covering 2011-2014.
“There were, undoubtedly, challenges that led to the backlog which may have been beyond the control of the previous managements. However, the important factor was not to look to the past. We saw an opportunity to address the problem and resolved to clear the arrears in the shortest possible time,” the CFO said.
He also hinted that the corporation’s management constituted a Project Steering Committee (PSC) under the chairmanship of AbdulRazaq, which met on a weekly basis with the auditors and all relevant stakeholders to identify and isolate key challenges and give them priority attention.
“With this approach, management achieved the first step of concluding the audit of the 2011-2012 financial positions and presented same to the board in 2016 and in recognition of that modest achievement, the NNPC board further mandated management to clear the remaining outstanding reports for the years 2013-2016 and the result today is the delivery and board approval of the audited group financial statements as at 31 December 2016,” he added.
