Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has cleared the air on the country’s fuel subsidy regime, insisting that “better processes have reduced subsidy payments to marketers and only verified claims from certified marketers are paid.”

Okonjo-Iweala in a document made available to News Express yesterday said the explanation had become necessary “for the record and in the interest of the Nigerian public which has a right to correct information.”

She then went on to explain as follows: “First, it is important to keep in mind the big picture about the current status of payments to marketers compared to the recent past.

“In response to public anger about high payments to marketers in 2011, the Federal Ministry of Finance working under the CME with DMO and PPPRA instituted new processes and procedures to curb fraud and inefficiency. The ministry makes payments based on verified batched claims sent by PPPRA to DMO which verifies them again in a new process put in place before final payment.

“As a result, the payments have declined from N2.2 trillion in 2011 to N950 billion in 2012, much of this due to subsidy phase down but a good part also due to better verification processes.

“The Federal Ministry of Finance has thus far this year paid N287 billion in verified claims to marketers. The details have been published in our regular updates in the newspapers and magazines.

“We are getting ready to make additional payments to marketers. Marketers are also making claims for interest and foreign exchange differentials as provided for in the PPPRA template, which have not been paid, and we are verifying those as well.

“As the public has been made aware, no marketer involved in questionable deals is paid. All fraudulent marketers identified by the Aig-Imoukhuede committee had their names published in the media. A few were subsequently sent by the committee to the Serious Fraud Office for further investigation and were later cleared based on their defence and a re-examination of the evidence. These joined the list of cleared marketers. The others remain blacklisted.”

•Photo shows Okonjo-Iweala.

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