Senate Summons Mele Kyari, Former NNPCL Officials Over Alleged Missing N210 Trillion
Former Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has been summoned by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts over alleged financial irregularities amounting to about N210 trillion. The committee’s chairman, Senator Ahmed Wadada, announced the decision during a press conference in Abuja, stating that Kyari and members of his former management team are required to explain several issues discovered in the company’s audited financial records between 2017 and 2023. According to Wadada, the investigation began in May 2025 after lawmakers reviewed reports from the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation covering the 2019 and 2020 financial years. He said the committee later expanded its probe to include NNPCL’s audited accounts prepared by external auditors, as well as financial documents from the former National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), now called NNPCL Upstream Investment Limited. The lawmaker explained that the panel raised 19 queries to the company seeking clarification on inconsistencies found in the financial statements. However, the responses provided by NNPCL were described as inadequate. One of the major concerns raised by the committee was the N103 trillion listed as accrued expenses in the company’s 2022 audited accounts. The expenses were said to include retention fees, legal costs and audit charges, but the accounts did not provide a clear breakdown of the figures. Although the company explained that the amount represented cumulative spending by joint venture partners under the joint venture cash call arrangement, the committee rejected the claim, noting that the cash call system had been abolished in 2016 and became effective from January 2017. The panel also questioned another N107 trillion recorded as sundry receivables as of December 2023. According to the committee, NNPCL claimed that some of the funds were owed by defunct banks and other organisations but failed to provide detailed records identifying the institutions involved. Lawmakers further observed a possible duplication of subsidy deductions worth N3.8 trillion, which they said appeared to have been removed both from crude oil revenues recorded by NAPIMS and from petroleum product proceeds in NNPC’s accounts. Additional concerns were raised over about N5 trillion listed as direct production costs between 2017 and 2021, despite the fact that neither NNPC nor NAPIMS directly produces crude oil. The committee also described as excessive the N5.9 billion reportedly spent on incorporation expenses during the transition from NNPC to NNPCL. Following the discoveries, the committee directed the company to account for the combined N210 trillion linked to unexplained accrued expenses and receivables. It also asked that any production costs wrongly charged to crude oil revenue within the period under review be refunded. In addition to Kyari, the committee has invited former Chief Financial Officer Umar Ajiya and the former Group General Manager of NAPIMS, Bala Wunti, to appear before it as part of the ongoing investigation.
