The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, on Tuesday announced that its annual payments into the Federation Account in 2018 surpassed its projections in the 2018 budget with over N41 billion.

The Managing Director of NNPC Capital, Godwin Okonkwo, representing the Group Managing Director, Maikanti Baru, during a presentation to the House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee on the Investigation of the Non-Remittances of Funds to the Federation Account by the Nation’s Oil firm between July 2017 and December 2018 made this disclosure during the hearing.

He stated, that the corporation remitted N1.26 trillion as against the estimated N1.22 trillion in the 2018 budget.

In a statement, Ndu Ughamadu, NNPC spokesperson quoting the GMD hinted that against the 2.3 million barrels per day, mbpd, proposed in the 2018 budget, the national daily production for the period under review averaged between 1.9mbpd and 1.89mbpd.

Baru stated the two sources of inflows into the Federation Account from the NNPC which includes equity crude oil sales, less cost of recovery from the Joint Venture, JV, cash call arrears and domestic crude less cost of recovery.

“The current management of NNPC ensures it contributes to the cost of the production of crude oil and gas in the upstream sector to avoid a repeat of the mistakes of the past. If we had made cash call payments in the past, the arrears we are liquidating now would not have arisen.

“The current situation creates a win-win scenario for the country. The NNPC is strategically saving for the rainy day to make a better future for all of us by liquidating the arrears,” Baru said.

He said the NNPC regularly balances its books with the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, and the JV cash calls in order to make sure that the future generations do not suffer from the legacy debt.

Legacy debts simply refer to debts that were incurred and inherited as part of an asset.

He said the NNPC had cleared its backlog of unaudited account, stating the delay was from Joint Venture partners that were being awaited to turn in their budget performance for the 2018 budget circle to be completed.

Chukwuka Onyema Wilfred, Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee, praised the NNPC for responding to all the issues raised, adding that the interface would go a long way to putting to rest allegations of non-remittances of funds against the NNPC.

In a related development, Ndu Ughamadu, NNPC Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division rebutted claims that the NNPC exempted people living with disabilities from its ongoing recruitment exercise according to a report.

“We have a corporate policy here and we do employ many of the physically challenged persons in the corporation. We have one with us here at the corporate affairs division.

“We have them accommodated also in this ongoing recruitment and also under our Corporate Social Responsibility, CSO, we have helped a lot of the physically challenged especially in the Niger Delta area,’’ he said.