Nigeria - The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has begin remittance of the missing $1.5bn to the federation account, Minister of Petroleum resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke has announced, according to Punch.

The Federation Account Allocation Committee had on Monday night constituted a committee to find out the reasons for the delay in the refund of the sum.

PriceWaterHouse Coopers had in the report of its forensic audit report of the corporation recommended that the NNPC should refund the amount to the Federation Account.

Alison-Madueke however explained that the unremitted fund was owed by the NPDC for a block that had been assigned from the NNPC to the NPDC.

She said, “The PriceWaterHouse Coopers forensic audit that was done few weeks ago in his recommendation mentioned that $1.48bn was owed by the NPDC for a block that had hitherto been assigned from the NNPC to the NPDC which is its subsidiary.

“They felt that the right process would be that the NPDC will refund that money to the Federation Account. The NPDC has apparently started those refunds and it is also in discussion with the NNPC and the DPR on same. So the refund has actually began.”

While saying that the payment was being done under her directive, she insisted that the sum was not missing but transferred by the NNPC to the NPDC.

The minister also denied media reports that she was reaching out to some prominent Nigerians, including a former military Head of State, Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar (retd.), to seek soft landing from the incoming government.