The yet-to-be-named auditor will assist the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation in determining the real amount owed by the government.
This development comes five months after the plan was proposed at the monthly Federation Allocation Accounts Committee meeting in April 2024.
NNPC claimed an outstanding of N6tn but was reduced to N2.7tn after an initial audit by an audit firm, KPMG.
It was gathered that the audit would span from 2015 to 2021.
Although the Director of Home Finance at the Ministry of Finance, Ali Mohammed, has always provided updates at every FAAC meeting, the latest development for an external auditor indicates that no concrete step has been taken to audit the claim.
On May 30, 2023, a few hours after the “subsidy is gone” declaration by President Bola Tinubu, the NNPC Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, told State House correspondents that the Federal Government still owed the firm the sum of N2.8tn spent on petrol subsidy.
While saying the NNPC footed petrol subsidy bills from its cash flow, Kyari said the government had so far been unable to pay back the N2.8tn.
Commenting on the issue, the Chairman of Commissioners’ Forum/HCF, Ekiti State, suggested the need to extend the period of the audit review to December 2023, considering that the exercise was yet to commence.
Also, the Permanent Secretary of Finance, Lydia Jafiya, suggested the need to limit the scope of the audit exercise to cover the period 2021 to June 2022, when NNPC was a corporation before transitioning to a Limited Liability Company.
Concluding, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, appreciated the contributions of members on the issue and expressed optimism that the exercise would be speedily executed.