September 27, (THEWILL) – The latest controversy over the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) financial records has once again exposed an uncomfortable feature of Nigeria’s oil economy: When enormous sums of public money become difficult to explain, the first casualty is usually public confidence.
The controversy centres on the sums of N107 trillion in receivables and N103 trillion in payables or accrued expenses in NNPC Ltd.’s audited financial statements for the 2023 financial year.
The figures triggered a Senate investigation and, subsequently, a lawsuit by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), which wants NNPC Ltd. compelled to provide detailed explanations, supporting documents and reconciliations. The Senate Public Accounts Committee has insisted that the figures must be supported by detailed schedules showing how they were generated, who the counterparties were, and how the balances were reconciled.
The Senate’s examination of such a substantial sum has prompted a more comprehensive inquiry into the national oil company documents, verifying and justifying certain of its most significant financial statement components. Consequently, these matters frequently become sufficiently questionable and, perhaps, contentious until they are resolved.
Why the figures matter
Pundits say the figures are striking when placed against the size of NNPC’s balance sheet. The company reported total assets of N246.82 trillion in 2023, up from N58.49 trillion in 2022. That represented an increase of about 322 percent in one year. Trade and other receivables also surged from N19.08 trillion in 2022 to N164.45 trillion in 2023, an increase of more than N145 trillion.
The increase in receivables was driven largely by what NNPC classified as other receivables. In the 2023 accounts, other receivables stood at N108.44 trillion, compared with just N740.8 billion in 2022. The accounts also showed N42.51 trillion in related-party receivables, N9.38 trillion owed by the Federation and N4.12 trillion in trade receivables.
On the liability side, NNPC’s trade and other payables increased from N25.03 trillion in 2022 to N163.73 trillion in 2023. Other payables accounted for N112.58 trillion, while accrued expenses alone were N104.13 trillion, compared with N442.58 billion in 2022.
Some industry experts say the disputed figures were not isolated accounting entries, and were also part of a much larger expansion in the company’s reported receivables and liabilities during 2023.
Enter the paradox
NNPCL released the 2023 accounts in August 2024, reporting a profit after tax of N3.297 trillion, up from N2.548 trillion in 2022. The company said the accounts demonstrated its commitment to transparency and accountability following its transition into a commercially oriented entity under the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA.
But questions about the quality of the disclosures persisted.
In 2025, the Senate Public Accounts Committee began pressing NNPCL for explanations of the large balances. NNPC subsequently provided a written response, according to reporting on the committee’s proceedings, explaining the N107 trillion receivables and N103 trillion accrued expenses. The committee was not satisfied with the explanation and continued its examination of the accounts.
By July 2026, the issue had reached another stage. The committee summoned NNPC’s external auditors and demanded detailed schedules and working papers supporting the more than N210 trillion entries.
The auditors told the lawmakers that the supporting schedules formed part of their working papers and requested about two weeks to retrieve them. The committee rejected that timeline and gave them one week to return with the requested documents.
The Senate’s objection was not simply about the size of the numbers. Chairman of the Committee, Senator Ibrahim Dankwambo, said NNPC officials had repeatedly attributed the balances largely to joint-venture cash calls and payments but had not identified the individual transactions or counterparties.
The committee therefore wanted to know whose receivables were being reported, whom NNPC owed, what transactions produced the balances and whether the two sides could be reconciled.
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What the Senate is saying
Importantly, the Senate did not establish that N210 trillion had been stolen or had disappeared from NNPC’s accounts. The committee’s position was that the figures remained unexplained and unreconciled.
Bala Wunti, former Group General Manager of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, subsequently told the committee that there was no evidence in the 2023 audited accounts that N210 trillion was missing.
Wunti explained that the N107 trillion represented money owed to NNPC, while the approximately N103 trillion in accrued expenses represented liabilities owed by NNPC. In his view, adding the two categories together and describing the total as missing money was an incorrect interpretation of the accounts.
However, that clarification does not eliminate the underlying documentation question.
An oil and gas expert who would not want his identity disclosed because of his closeness to the authorities offered some explanations. He emphasised that the accounts themselves show why the issue requires more than a simple comparison of receivables and payables.
NNPC’s 2023 cash-flow statement recorded a N144.85 trillion increase in trade and other receivables as a working-capital adjustment. At the same time, trade and other payables increased by N138.70 trillion. Despite those very large movements, the group reported cash generated from operations of N11.62 trillion for the year.
Those figures demonstrate the scale of the non-cash or working-capital movements running through NNPC’s accounts. They also explain why the Senate has focused on the schedules beneath the headline balances rather than simply asking whether cash equivalent to N210 trillion left the company.
Other Side of the Papers
NNPC’s subsequent financial reporting provides another important part of the accounting trail. Its 2024 annual report contains adjustments to the prior-year presentation of joint-venture balances, including the treatment of related receivables and payables. NNPC reported net income of N5.4 trillion for 2024 and proposed N4.3 trillion in dividends, underscoring the scale of the company’s operations and the importance of its financial reporting to government revenues and public accountability.
Yet, the existence of a later accounting adjustment is not, by itself, equivalent to producing every underlying transaction record demanded by the Senate, the source said. The lawmakers insist on documentation – evidence of the transactions referred to. “Why not show them the documents and go and let this controversy be put to rest,” asked the source.
The demand by SERAP
That distinction became more significant in July 2026, when the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project filed a Federal High Court action over more than N211 trillion recorded in NNPC’s 2023 financial statements.
SERAP’s suit seeks disclosure of documents relating to the N107.6 trillion in sundry receivables and N103.4 trillion in accrued expenses, including the identities of debtors and creditors, the amounts involved, the legal basis for the entries and supporting documents.
The demand for those records means the central issue has evolved from the headline N210 triillion figure to the quality of the audit trail behind it.
For NNPC, the numbers are substantial enough to make the issue material. In 2023, total assets were N246.82 trillion; trade and other receivables were N164.45 trillion; trade and other payables were N163.73 trillion; profit after tax was N3.30 trillion; and cash generated from operations was N11.62 trillion.
The Senate’s intervention therefore goes to a fundamental issue in financial reporting: whether a company can provide sufficient evidence to allow a reader of its audited accounts to understand how exceptionally large balances were accumulated, who the counterparties are, whether the amounts remain recoverable or payable, and how subsequent adjustments affected them.
NNPC’s explanations have established that the N210 trillion should not simply be characterised as missing cash. But until the supporting schedules and transaction-level documentation are sufficiently clear, the more important question remains unanswered: how exactly were the balances built up, and can every major component be independently reconciled to the transactions that produced it?
The Transparency Challenge and Response
Why did figures running into hundreds of trillions require repeated Senate hearings before their accounting treatment became clear? Why did lawmakers say earlier engagements with NNPC failed to reconcile the entries? And why should Nigerians have to depend on legislative hearings, civil-society litigation and public controversy before enormous financial entries in an oil company owned by the state become understandable? Efforts to seek answers to these questions from the Corporation were unsuccessful as its Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Mr. Andy Odey failed to respond to calls and reply messages delivered to his phone.
However, Reuters has previously described the national oil company as having a history of opaque dealings and financial difficulties, while noting that NNPCL only began publishing financial results in 2021.
Ike Onwuachu, a petroleum-industry expert, had argued that the controversy reflected a need to distinguish missing funds from accounting entries, which requires reconciliation and proper interpretation.
Mike Akannor, a financial expert, also stressed that transparency builds confidence, and this can be achieved when the evidence, such as adequate and proper documentation, is not lacking.
SERAP, for its part, has become a persistent litigant on petroleum-sector accountability. Its recent cases include suits concerning alleged unremitted oil revenue, refinery rehabilitation expenditure, alleged oil-money discrepancies and NNPC’s rebranding expenditure. In 2024, it sued the Corporation over alleged missing $2.04 billion and N164 billion; in 2025, over alleged N825 billion and $2.5 billion refinery-related funds and alleged N500 billion unremitted revenue; and in 2026, it brought further actions involving NNPC’s accounts and expenditures.
The sheer frequency of these lawsuits raises another question: what happens after the headlines? SERAP’s litigation keeps accountability before the courts, but litigation is not itself proof of wrongdoing.
Likewise, a Senate probe is not a finding of guilt. The public interest lies in what both institutions ultimately produce: verified documents, reconciliations, recoveries where warranted, sanctions where wrongdoing is established, and institutional reforms. The Senate has initiated countless probes in the 10th Assembly. None of these produced any tangible result.
The Senate must therefore resist the familiar Nigerian pattern in which an explosive figure generates hearings, summonses and threats before public attention moves elsewhere. The committee had already demanded detailed schedules and audit working papers from NNPC’s external auditors. What happens when the demand is met? Or is it another way of arm-twisting the national oil company to “appease” the lawmakers?
According to experts, that documentation is more important than political theatre.
NNPCL, they say, equally has a responsibility to go beyond insisting that no money is missing. If its accounting treatment is legitimate, the company should make the underlying schedules sufficiently transparent for independent experts, lawmakers and citizens to understand them.
A sober reflection by a dependable source in the oil and gas sector who confided in THEWILL said the Corporation has been quietly undergoing a transformation that would wean it from the government’s apron strings since it transitioned into a limited liability company. But the movement is not as smooth as anticipated, creating some ambiguity in the company’s operations.
“Do you know that when we wanted to incorporate NNPC after PIA, the government was supposed to pay N2.9 billion but could not, and the company had to source the money. So, you would always have these debit and credit issues,” said the sources, adding, “Oil business is always transacted in dollars, but when you convert the money into Naira, it looks big. After all, what is Nigeria’s total budget, that a Corporation is saddled with a questionable N211 trillion? All I can say is that the government should allow NNPC to run as a limited liability. The current management has pledged to reactivate the refineries, and I know they can. With the country’s refineries working alongside Dangote’s and the one being built by BUA, Nigeria would have solved its energy challenges. This is what we should focus on.”
The issue is ultimately bigger than N211 trillion, say pundits.
They argue that Nigeria’s petroleum resources belong to the federation, and the credibility of the institutions managing those resources depends not merely on whether funds are technically accounted for, but whether the accounts can be understood, independently scrutinised and reconciled without months of controversy.
However, the real test is therefore not whether SERAP wins another lawsuit or whether the Senate stages another hearing. It is whether, at the end of this episode, Nigerians are left with documents instead of allegations, reconciliations instead of suspicions, and institutional reforms instead of another abandoned probe. That is the accountability dividend the country should demand from the N211 trillion controversy.
Ogochukwu Onwaeze is a writer specializing in business and economic journalism. At THEWILL News Media, she translates market trends, financial developments, and policy shifts into clear and engaging stories.
