By Samuel Malik

The All Progressives Congress, APC, has reiterated its call on the federal government to probe the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, over dividends and taxes remittances by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, particularly before June.

The APC in a statement on Wednesday by its publicity secretary, Lai Mohammed, said the call is against the backdrop that the NNPC withdrew $1.2 billion from banks with the intention of depositing it with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, a move it described as a panic reaction to its revelation that over $4 billion in dividends is unaccounted for by the NNPC.

”The top officials of the NNPC and others who met on Monday and decided to withdraw the $1.2 billion from the corporation’s account to the CBN must be asked a number of questions, including their motive for the decision and the whereabouts of the commissions paid on such funds,” the party said.

According to the party, instead of remitting the NLNG’s dividends to the federation account, some officials of the NNPC rather placed such monies in local commercial banks in order to draw interest.

”Now that the cat has been let out of the bag, they have started moving the funds from the banks to the CBN. We believe what we are seeing now is just a tip of the iceberg, hence the need for the authorities to call the NNPC officials to give accounts of the paid NLNG dividends to date,” APC said, calling for an immediate investigation before the officials cover their tracks.

The party questioned why until the arrival of the present government, Nigerians were not aware of any NLNG “dividends and taxes”, saying it is not a coincidence that this has come to public knowledge.

”It is not by accident that until the advent of the Buhari Administration that has decided to enthrone transparency in governance, no one has heard anything about NLNG dividends and taxes, while the funds therefrom have not been shared as they should have been,” it noted.

The NNPC has come in for some serious bashing in recent times, with mind-boggling revelations coming out about the enormity of the sleaze that went on in the corporation, particularly in the immediate past government.

Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State recently called for the disbandment of the company for forming a “parallel government” as a result of the amount of the country’s resources it allocates to itself.