In an interview in Abuja, Oduah who had earlier expressed mixed feelings on NEITI’s report on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday, explained that figures of loss of oil and gas revenues to the tune of N1trillion may not be accurate, noting that there was no mechanism in place that captured financial transactions in oil and gas sector.
In what she described as recurrent decimal of financial loss year- in- year out, she wondered why the nation continued to rely on record of volumes of transactions of crude lifted by multinational oil companies and not the country having its own way of generating records.
“The figures which were reflected in NEITI Report that was defended by Mr Waziri may not be correct, because they have to depend on figures given to them by oil companies themselves”, she stated.
She emphasised that system failure was responsible for those lapses, stressing that until there was policy solution, the trend would continue.
“Even when I was working at the NNPC, we were having these problems and the only way to solve these problems was through government policy that will proactively take care of this”, she noted.
Oduah, however, added that there was nothing in the proposed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) that would help in accurate tracking of the industry financial transactions, pointing out that there was need for a clear cut set of laws for all government revenues.
“I do not mean taking care of these problems through the proposed Petroleum Industry Bill, but statutory laws as to how government revenues were generated and remitted by appropriate authorities”, she added.
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