President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his administration has identified banks, financial institutions and countries in which payments for stolen Nigerian crude oil have been deposited.
Bihari who spoke at a meeting with visiting United States Congressmen in Abuja on Monday, acknowledged the support and cooperation his administration was getting from the international community in gathering required intelligence for tracing and recovering stolen national resources.
The President, according to a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, told the Congressmen led by Rep. Darrel Issa that “We are getting cooperation from the international community, including information on ships that take crude oil from Nigeria and change direction, or pour their contents into other ships mid-stream.
“Some monies were paid to individual accounts. We are identifying the financial institutions and countries that are involved. I have been assured that when we get all our documents together, the United States and other countries will treat our case with sympathy.”
President Buhari told the Congressmen that his administration will welcome more regular meetings of the Nigeria-United States Bi-National Commission, noting that the Commission could serve as a more useful platform for the promotion of bilateral trade and economic relations as well as joint cooperation in the war against terrorism.
Rep. Darrel assured him that the United States will support Nigeria against Boko Haram by providing training, intelligence and military platforms.
“We look forward to helping you in many ways to end the Boko Haram insurgency and the theft of crude oil in the Gulf of Guinea,” he said.
Nigeria, the world’s seventh largest producer of crude oil, accounts for about 68.1 per cent of the total revenue Africa lost in a decade as a result of illegal transfer of funds abroad.
There has been reports that stolen Nigerian oil worth billions of dollars is sold every year on international markets and much of the proceeds are laundered in world financial centres like Britain and the United States which officials said will help President Buhari to recover the funds.
An estimated 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil was stolen from pipelines in the Niger Delta, the report by London-based Chatham House had said, not including the unknown quantities stolen from export terminals.
The theft amounts to around five percent of Nigeria’s current two million bpd production but has a wider impact because oil companies are often forced to shut down pipelines due to damage caused by thieves.
The activity costs Nigeria’s economy an estimated $5 billion a year in potential revenue. While oil majors like Royal Dutch Shell and Italy’s Eni are often the first to complain about theft, it is unclear how much they are losing from it.
A measure of acceptable losses may be keeping them from taking determined preventive action, the report said. Oil firms do not pay royalties on stolen oil.
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