Nigeria’s state oil institutions remitted more than N322bn and $116.9m into the Federation Account within two months of a sweeping presidential directive aimed at tightening control over petroleum revenues, according to official documents presented at recent Federation Account Allocation Committee meetings.
Records submitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) showed that the inflows followed the implementation of Executive Order 9, signed in February 2026 by Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The order mandates the full transfer of crude oil and gas revenues into the Federation Account, in what officials describe as a major effort to improve transparency, eliminate opaque deductions and strengthen public finances amid mounting fiscal pressure.
Invoking constitutional provisions granting the federal government ownership of the country’s mineral resources, Tinubu argued that entrenched deductions and overlapping funding mechanisms in the oil sector had significantly weakened revenue remittances to federal, state and local governments.
“For too long, excessive deductions, overlapping funds, and structural distortions in the oil and gas sector have weakened remittances to the Federation Account,” the president said in a statement posted on his verified X account. “When revenues meant for federal, state, and local governments are trapped in layers of charges and retention mechanisms, development suffers. That must end.”
Documents presented at FAAC meetings for March and April showed that the NNPC remitted a combined $116.9m alongside more than N163bn in crude oil and gas revenues across the two-month period.
For February 2026 receipts shared in March, the state oil company transferred $87.63m and N121.34bn into the Federation Account, declaring that “100 per cent” of earnings had been remitted in compliance with Executive Order 9.
The following month, for March 2026 receipts shared in April, the company remitted a further $29.28m and N42.64bn.
The revenue streams included crude oil exports, domestic crude sales to the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Production Sharing Contract profits, gas receipts and miscellaneous petroleum earnings.
According to the FAAC submissions, crude oil export earnings accounted for the bulk of inflows, generating $25.7m in March alone, while PSC profits contributed $3.52m. Domestic naira-denominated proceeds from crude exports stood at N37.67bn.
The documents also detailed how PSC profits were distributed between the Federation Account and the Federation Sub-Account in line with statutory sharing formulas.
Separately, the NUPRC disclosed that it remitted N34.2bn in March 2026 from upstream petroleum collections including royalties, gas flare penalties, concession rentals and licence-related payments.
The commission said the remittance reflected its statutory obligation to transfer all collectable upstream petroleum revenues into the Federation Account.
A breakdown showed that oil and gas royalties generated N18.69bn, while gas flare penalties contributed N10.2bn. Miscellaneous oil revenues accounted for N4.95bn, with concession rentals adding N364m.
However, the March figures marked a steep decline from the N124.4bn collected by the regulator in February. The fall was driven largely by weaker royalty inflows, which dropped by more than N85bn month-on-month.
The latest remittances are seen as an early test of the government’s attempt to impose tighter fiscal discipline across the oil sector, long criticised for opaque accounting practices, under-remittances and revenue leakages.
The reforms come as the administration seeks to stabilise public finances, raise crude oil production and improve oversight across the petroleum value chain while state governments grapple with debt pressures, rising wage obligations and widening infrastructure deficits.
The World Bank has also backed stricter enforcement of the order, arguing that recent gains in transparency would only be sustained if the government dismantled remaining “cost-of-collection” arrangements and shifted ministries and agencies towards conventional budgetary funding.
In its latest Nigeria Development Update report, titled Nigeria’s Tomorrow Must Start Today: The Case for Early Childhood Development, the bank said the executive order had already produced “notable improvements” in revenue transparency.
But it warned that “further consolidation of recent gains” would depend on how rigorously the directive is enforced across government institutions and whether long-standing deductions at source are eventually eliminated altogether.
