EDITORIAL

Nigeria’s Presidency wrote off trillions in NNPCL debt, then issued an executive order to fix the transparency it had just bypassed. The sequence raises valid questions.

On February 13, 2026, President Bola Tinubu signed Executive Order 9 — a sweeping directive stripping the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited of its power to deduct management fees and frontier exploration charges before remitting revenues to the Federation Account. The Presidency described it as a constitutional correction, an end to what the President called “leakage where there should be leadership.” It was widely praised as one of the most significant fiscal interventions since the Petroleum Industry Act.

But the order arrived three months after a quieter, less celebrated decision: the write-off of $1.42 billion and N5.57 trillion in NNPCL’s legacy debts to the Federation — a decision made inside a government committee, passed through a FAAC document, and disclosed retroactively to a public that had no say in it. The Senate was still demanding answers about N210 trillion in unreconciled accounts. NEITI had not been consulted. No legislative debate was held.

Executive Order 9 is real reform. But reform that follows erasure is not the same as reform that prevents it. The sequence matters. And in Nigeria’s oil sector, the sequence has never been more important to interrogate.

THE ERASURE

The Senate Committee on Public Accounts had given NNPCL’s Group Chief Executive Officer a three-week deadline to answer audit queries covering 2017 to 2023 — N210 trillion in unaccounted funds comprising N107 trillion in receivables and N103 trillion in liabilities drawn directly from the company’s own books. The GCEO missed a scheduled hearing. A document submitted before a subsequent session contained figures inconsistent with previously audited statements.

Simultaneously, the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update disclosed that NNPCL failed to remit N500 billion to the Federation Account in a single quarter despite generating N1.1 trillion in crude revenues. The Finance Ministry later acknowledged what it called a hidden admission: that despite improved production and favourable market conditions, oil and gas inflows to the Federation Account had been declining, confirming that NNPCL was retaining vast sums. Where those funds went remains unanswered.

Then, in November 2025, the Presidency approved writing off $1.42 billion and N5.57 trillion in NNPCL’s legacy obligations to the Federation. The write-off covered Production Sharing Contracts, Domestic Supply obligations, modified carry arrangements, and joint venture royalty receivables accumulated through December 31, 2024. It cleared 96 percent of NNPCL’s dollar-denominated legacy debt and 88 percent of its naira obligations in a single stroke. The NUPRC confirmed it had “passed the appropriate accounting entries.” No public announcement. No legislative approval. No independent audit. No NEITI review. A separate dispute over an alleged $42.37 billion in under-remittances between 2011 and 2017, which NNPCL rejects but FAAC has referred to joint reconciliation — remains unresolved beneath it all.

This is the erasure. Trillions of naira in disputed obligations, resolved not through transparent arbitration or legislative process, but through accounting entries passed in a committee room and disclosed in a document obtained by journalists.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 9: REFORM OR FIG LEAF?

Against that backdrop, Executive Order 9 deserves a clear-eyed assessment rather than either uncritical praise or reflexive dismissal.

What it does is genuinely significant. Under the PIA framework, NNPCL retained 30 percent of Federation revenues as a management fee on profit oil and gas under Production Sharing Contracts, and another 30 percent for the Frontier Exploration Fund. Together, these deductions amounted to approximately N906.91 billion in 2025 alone — funds that bypassed the Federation Account entirely. EO9 halts both deductions, requires direct remittance of all royalty oil, tax oil, profit oil, and profit gas to the Federation Account, and projects N1.42 trillion in fresh inflows in 2026 alone. The February FAAC figures already show the effect: NNPCL remitted 100 percent of PSC profit oil to the Federation pool, compared to just 40 percent previously.

What it does not do is equally significant. It does not retroactively audit the years during which those deductions were made. It does not explain where the retained funds went. It does not resolve the N210 trillion in Senate audit queries. It does not undo the November 2025 debt write-off, and it was not in place to prevent it. The Finance Ministry’s own implementation committee has acknowledged that a forensic audit of NNPCL’s books from 2021 to 2025 is “arguably imperative” — but no such audit has been ordered.

There is also the legal question. The Nigerian Bar Association President, Afam Osigwe SAN, has argued that the President cannot amend or override an Act of the National Assembly through executive fiat — that the appropriate route is legislative amendment. Some PSC deductions were embedded in contracts with international oil companies, and cancelling them by presidential order exposes Nigeria to arbitration claims worth billions. The Presidency insists EO9 merely enforces constitutional supremacy under Section 162, not new law. That argument may prevail. But legal fragility in an instrument this consequential is itself a transparency risk: reforms that can be challenged and reversed in arbitration are not the same as reforms legislated into permanence.

The question the headline asks therefore has a precise answer: yes, EO9 is necessary. And yes, it is both too little and too late — not because the reform is wrong, but because it corrects forward without accounting backward. Closing the tap does not explain where the water went.

THE EIA STANDARD NIGERIA SHOULD ASPIRE TO

To understand how deep the structural problem runs, the American model is instructive. The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes over two million data series — production volumes, refinery utilisation, import and export flows, revenue projections — freely accessible online, updated weekly, downloadable by any citizen. The EIA Administrator is legally insulated from political approval: the Department of Energy Organization Act explicitly prohibits any other government officer from approving EIA publications before release.

The operational result is that over two million people access EIA data every month. Energy markets price oil using EIA releases. Researchers, journalists, investors, and citizens interrogate sector performance in real time — without needing a Senate summons, a leaked FAAC document, or a journalist’s freedom of information request. Anomalies surface early. Corrections happen in public. The contrast with Nigeria’s oil governance is not a matter of resources — it is a matter of design.

NEITI: THE WATCHDOG THAT WAS NOT IN THE ROOM

Nigeria is not without a transparency architecture. The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative was established precisely to audit the flow of money between oil companies and the government — and it has delivered real results when given the chance. A 2017 NEITI policy brief exposing over $20 billion in unremitted NNPC revenue triggered a national reckoning. A 2019 study co-produced with OpenOil estimated $16 to $28 billion in losses from unreviewed production sharing contracts, directly contributing to a renegotiation of royalty terms.

The November 2025 debt write-off is NEITI’s most damning failure — not of its own making, but of its structural position. NEITI was not consulted on the write-off methodology. There was no independent audit of the Stakeholder Alignment Committee’s reconciliation criteria. No civil society sign-off. The decision that resolved years of disputed billions was made and implemented before NEITI could say a word. That is the accountability gap the institution was designed to fill — and the precise gap it currently lacks the legal power to close.

A 2025 MOU between NEITI and NNPCL to establish a joint technical committee on data exchange is a welcome gesture. But gestures are not governance. NEITI needs statutory authority to mandate compliance, sanction non-disclosure, and — critically — to provide mandatory independent sign-off before any presidential decision that alters the Federation’s financial relationship with NNPCL. A debt write-off of this magnitude should require a published NEITI audit before a presidential pen touches the approval. That is not bureaucracy. That is the minimum standard of accountability that N210 trillion demands.

WHAT COMES AFTER THE ORDER

Executive Order 9 is the right direction. But it needs three things to become genuine reform rather than a corrective that flatters the present while obscuring the past.

First, a forensic audit of NNPCL’s books from 2021 to 2025 must be commissioned, published, and conducted by an independent body — not an internal government committee. The Finance Ministry has already acknowledged this is imperative. The acknowledgement must become an instruction.

Second, EO9 must be legislated into permanence. The NBA’s constitutional challenge is not frivolous. An executive order that can be reversed by the next president, or unwound in arbitration by international oil companies, is not a structural reform. A PIA amendment is necessary, and the National Assembly must be brought into the process rather than bypassed by it.

Third, NEITI must be given teeth. Not a technical committee, not an MOU, not a monthly infographic — but statutory sanctioning power, mandatory pre-approval authority over major fiscal decisions affecting the Federation Account, and funding commensurate with a mandate that covers the largest sector of the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria has the architecture. It has NEITI. It has the constitutional framework. It has, in EO9, a President who has shown willingness to act on oil sector leakages. What it has not yet shown is the willingness to account for what was lost before the order was signed.

A VERDICT

The EIA was built deliberately, insulated legally, and funded consistently — because the United States understood that sound energy markets require a reliable flow of honest information. Nigeria is not America. But the principle is universal: you cannot govern what you will not measure, and you cannot be trusted with what you will not disclose.

Executive Order 9 closes a tap that should never have been open. But the trillions that flowed through it between 2021 and 2025 — retained, deducted, written off, and reconciled in committee rooms — deserve a full public accounting. Not a FAAC document. Not an accounting entry. A reckoning.

Too little? No. Too late for what has already been erased? Undeniably yes. And that is precisely why the order, however welcome, cannot be the end of the conversation.

This editorial reflects analysis of publicly available information on NNPCL’s legislative disclosures, NEITI audit reports, NUPRC FAAC documents, Executive Order 9 of 2026, and the EIA’s open data framework.