A former Group General Manager of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), Bala Wunti, has dismissed claims that N210 trillion is missing from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.) accounts.
He said a meticulous review of the company’s 2023 audited financial statements uncovered no such discrepancy.
Appearing before the Senate Committee reviewing NNPC Ltd.’s 2023 audited accounts, Wunti said allegations of missing funds stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding of accounting principles rather than evidence of financial misconduct.
“I have gone through this document page by page. I have not found where N210 trillion was mentioned,” Wunti told lawmakers.
According to him, the controversial figure emerged after two entirely different balance-sheet entries were wrongly combined.
He explained that approximately N107 trillion represented sundry receivables, funds owed to NNPC Ltd, while another N103 trillion reflected accrued expenses, representing liabilities owed by the company.
“Receivables are money other people owe you. Accrued expenses are money you owe other people. Accounting standards require these items to be reported separately. They cannot simply be added together and described as missing money,” he said.
Based on his independent review, Wunti declared under oath that there was no factual basis for claims that N210 trillion had disappeared from the company’s books.
The Senate committee had requested Wunti, who previously supervised upstream investments at NNPC, to conduct an independent assessment of the audited financial statements and present his findings.
Although his tenure did not span the entire period covered by the audit, Wunti said it substantially overlapped with the years under review, giving him firsthand knowledge of the accounting framework and financial reporting processes.
He also sought to clarify what he described as the unique accounting structure of national oil companies.
Unlike conventional commercial enterprises, Wunti explained, NNPC Ltd. simultaneously operates as a commercial business, serves as custodian of the Federation’s oil and gas assets, and performs strategic national energy security functions.
Those multiple responsibilities, he noted, require separate accounting records and reporting frameworks, making the company’s financial statements more complex than those of ordinary corporate entities.
He recalled that before the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), the former NNPC combined commercial, regulatory and policy responsibilities within one organisation.
While the PIA separated many of those functions, he said NNPC Ltd. still maintains distinct accounting records to reflect its commercial operations and its management of assets on behalf of the Federation.
Wunti, who headed NAPIMS from March 2020 before becoming Chief Offshore Investment Officer of NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services until December 2024, maintained that throughout his stewardship, there was no reported case of fraud or missing funds.
“There was no reported fraud or money missing throughout the period under my stewardship,” he told the committee.
Addressing another issue before lawmakers, Wunti also disputed reports that N5.8 billion was spent to incorporate NNPC Ltd. following the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act.
He explained that the actual statutory payments made to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for filing fees and stamp duties amounted to about N2.45 billion.
According to him, the larger figure resulted from accounting entries recorded separately across different books because one arm of the organisation made the statutory payments on behalf of government shareholders while another reflected the same transaction for reporting purposes.
“The only money paid was about N2.45 billion, and it went directly to government institutions. No third party received any payment,” he said.
To reduce future controversies, Wunti urged closer collaboration among NNPC Ltd., the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation to deepen understanding of the company’s accounting framework.