NNPC denies spending $11m on NAPIMS staff transfer, vehicles

National Petroleum Investment and Management Services, NAPIMS, a corporate services unit of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), has said it did not spend $9million on staff transfer alone, neither did it commit $2million to vehicles maintenance only.

According to a release by NNPC’s Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Ndu Ughamadu, on Wednesday, the $9million was reported to have been spent on staff transfers alone during a submission on NAPIMS’s 2016 budget performance to Senate Committee on Petroleum, Upstream.

The Corporation said the $9million was spent on appropriated items on pension fund, retirement benefit and staff transfers/redeployment.

It said the $2million reported to have been spent on vehicles maintenance, were used for budgeted items including light vehicles Maintenance (3rd Parties and In-House); Light Motor Vehicle for Operation – Fueling; and Heavy Motor Vehicle Maintenance (3rd Parties and In-House).

NAPIMS also said it was wrong to say that NAPIMS’s General Manager, Joint Venture Oil Operations, Mrs. Catherine Iheme, made the presentation to the Senate Committee as contained in some media reports of the event, as she was indeed absent at the Senate Hearing.

Recently, NAPIMS had told members of Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) that it spent $9m on staff transfers in 2016, and $2m on maintenance of vehicles.

The information shocked members of the committee when NAPIMS appeared before them to defend its 2017 budget estimates.

The General Manager, NAPIMS, Catherine Ngozi Iheme, who addressed the lawmakers, said, “On staff transfers, we are part of the NNPC group and, sometimes, you have transfers of staff in and out of NAPIMS. So, these transfers cost $9m.‎”

A member of the committee, Senator Gershom Bassey, had insisted that the only way the committee could assess the budgetary performance of the parastatal was to have access to the details of its expenditures.

Iheme, in her response, said NAPIMS’ $171m budget shrunk to $168m when the naira fell from N190 to N197 to the dollar.

She said, “The total budget is $171m equivalent, but that is not what we budgeted for. We had some expenditures in dollars and some in naira.

“But using the N190 exchange rate, we had an equivalent of $171m. In the actual performance, we may have had some dollar components and some naira components, but using the exchange rate of the actual date of transaction, which was converted, that is why we have $168m.

“And, again, the rate of performance varies.”