The annual expenditure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd rose to N788.7 billion in 2021 from the N648.6bn the previous year due to increase in salary, entertainment and other costs.
According to its 2021 financial audit, the highest chunk of N388.4bn went for staff salaries; that was a slight decrease from the N397bn it spent in 2020. Analysis of just the salary spent shows that N236bn was spent last year higher than the N212bn NNPC spent in 2020. Pension took another N150bn, a decrease from the N182bn spent the previous year.
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The huge emolument cost came at a time when the company has been commercialized with experts expecting a downsize in staff.
Another N81bn was spent on exchange loss, the cost of converting its oil earnings to local currency which rose by 100 per cent from the N42bn spent in 2020.
NNPC also wrote off N71bn for asset depreciation, a figure considered to be worrisome as it rose from N18bn in 2020.
The company also spent N11bn on entertainment in 2021, a sharp rise from the N1.8bn spent in 2020; NNPC blew N46bn on legal and professional fees which doubled from N24bn in 2020. It also tripled postage and telephone expenses from N5bn in 2020 to N15bn last year just as NNPC spent N390m on its directors, far above the N214m it spent in 2020.
Despite issues of liquidity, the firm’s officials spent N10bn on travels but that was N4bn less than what it spent in 2020, the Covid-19 year.
Another disturbing expense is the N20bn it spent on fines and penalty, rising from just N2bn the previous year.
Overall, the company said it recorded over N6.4trillion income which was higher than the N3.7trn it made earlier. While it spent N5.3trn In 2021 as cost of sales of petroleum products, nnpc spent N3.6trn in 2020. For the 2021 fiscal year, it made a net profit of N674bn far above the N287bn it made in 2020.
