The chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, has called on the incoming government of General Muhammadu Buhari to sanction the global renowned auditing firm, PriceWaterCoopers (PwC), for allegedly carrying out a shoddy forensic audit on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) regarding the alleged missing $20 billion from the corporation’s coffers.

The committee chairman also called on the incoming government to, with immediate effect, suspend PwC from carrying out any further financial audit or investigation on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria or any of its agencies.

Adeola, who made this statement when he spoke to journalists on the PwC’s report said that the firm did not actually carry out full audit of the NNPC accounts, adding that the House Committee on Public Accounts had long ago noticed something fishy in the PwC report as the said report averred that the only amount of money that the NNPC ought to remit was just $1.485 billion.

“Now, the PriceWaterCoopers has said that there is no report, that what they did was not a forensic audit but just gathering of information, that a lot of documents were not released to them to carry out this exercise. But before now, all these were not brought to the notice of this country and the country has been deceived all along.

“There were a lot of figures in the air. Initially there was $4.985 billion as against $1.485 billon. And if a reputable firm like PriceWaterCoopers could go to that level, I think it is only fair and proper for such body to be reported to the International Federation of Accounting and also to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

“This is not an issue that should be treated with levity. The incoming federal government must come after this firm and ensure that they are brought to book for all these anomalies and misrepresentation of facts and figures to deceive Nigerians. This firm must be adequately sanctioned,” Adeola said.