Remittances by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to the federation account plunged by N1.581tn between January and October this year, data obtained from NNPC showed.
It was, however, gathered that the drop was due to the humongous sums spent on subsidising Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, pipeline security and maintenance cost, among others during the 10-month period.
Figures obtained from the NNPC showed that N2.093tn was the net revenue that should have been remitted to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee for sharing among the three tiers of government between January and October 2021.
But what was actually shared by the three tiers of government during the 10-month period was put at N511.667bn, while N1.581tn could not be shared as the sum was used to subsidise petrol, repair of vandalised pipelines, among others.
This came as economic experts advised state governments to start looking inwards, develop their Internally Generated Revenues and cut down on governance cost to stay afloat going by the plunge in what they share on monthly basis from the federation account.
An analysis of the NNPC data indicated that petrol subsidy alone gulped as much as N1.027tn during the period, an amount that almost doubled what was shared by the three tiers of government.
It was also observed that pipeline security and maintenance cost consumed N42.76bn during the 10-month period, while frontier exploration services took N27.95bn, among other expenditures.
The projected monthly remittance as captured in the report by the NNPC was N209.307bn, but this target was never met all through the 10 months, as petrol subsidy kept cutting down the funds.
The monthly remittances showed that in January, February, March and April, the NNPC remitted N90.86bn, N64.161bn, N41.184bn and zero respectively to FAAC.
The national oil firm remitted N38.608bn, N47.162bn, N67.28bn, N80.03bn, N67.533bn and N14.85bn to FAAC in May, June, July, August, September and October respectively.
Further analysis of the document showed that the least monthly remittance of N14.85bn recorded in October was largely due to the high sum of N163.709bn that was spent on petrol subsidy in that month.
For about four years running, the NNPC has remained that sole importer of petrol into Nigeria. Other marketers stopped importing the commodity due to their inability to adequately access the United States dollar.