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The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts is to probe the Managing Director of Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) Plc; over N4.014 trillion revenue/debt owed Nigeria by some international electricity customers of Republic of Togo, Republic of Benin and Niger Republic.
The notice of summon was contained in a letter titled: ‘Re-consideration of Auditor General for the Federation Annual Reports’, dated 30th November, 2022 with Ref. No: HR/PAC/SCOS/9NASS/QUE.64/48 signed by the Chairman of the Committee , Hon. Oluwole Oke (PDP-Osun).
The Committee directed the NBET Managing Director to appear in person alongside Dr. Marilyn Amobi who served as MD/CEO from 2016 to 2020 to justify the reason for non-rendition of the Audited Accounts for the year 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The are expected to visit the Committee on Thursday, 8th December, 2022 at 11:00am; to defend the accounts laid before the parliament by the AuGF.
The full text of the letter reads:
“The Committee is in receipt of your correspondence and has reviewed your 2017-2019 Audited Accounts and resolved to request for the following additional information/documents to enable the Committee carry-out its Legislative mandate: Indebtedness of International Customers (Republic of Benin, Togo and Niger to NBET and TCN from 2018 to 2022).
“External Auditor’s report showed that the Nigeria has international bilateral agreement on electricity energy delivery and sales with Republic of Benin, Togo and. Niger. Prior to electricity transitional arrangement, these agreements were administered by Transmission Company of Nigeria.
“However, the Ministry of Power on 15/03/2016 directed that the administration of these international customers should be transferred to NBET.
“Moreover, before this can take place, certain agreements and negotiation have to be made and this accounted for the reason why TCN and NBET came up with a sharing formula to be used to split payment from international customers since TCN issued a single invoice for both administrative charges and energy payments.
“Based on this, 24% of the payment received from international customers was deducted for administrative charges by TCN while the balance of 76% was passed to NBET for the payment of GENCO capacity and energy bill. The total invoices issued to international customers was 30.7 billion and 20.7 billion in the year 2018 and 2019 respectively.
“Note 17(i) of the account receivables disclosed that the International Customers owed NBET the sum of 17.3 billion while DISCO and GENCI owed 828 billion and 2.2 billion respectively as at 2019 while 7576 provision was made for impairment.”
The Committee Chairman, Hon. Oker requested the schedule showing total invoices issued to international customers from 2018 to 2022, adding that the schedule must contain the value of invoices issued, amount paid and outstanding balance for the three countries.
