The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited’s 2025 audited financial statements have triggered fresh questions about the cost of protecting Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure after the company disclosed a ₦11.2 trillion receivable from the Federation linked to advances and costs incurred in securing the country’s petroleum assets.
The disclosure comes as NNPC reported ₦34.52 trillion in revenue and ₦7.18 trillion in profit after tax for the 2025 financial year. The company said its profit increased by 33 per cent from ₦5.4 trillion in 2024, while revenue declined from the previous year.
The ₦11.2 trillion figure is particularly striking because it is substantially larger than NNPC’s annual profit and represents roughly one-third of the company’s 2025 revenue.
However, the figure requires careful interpretation.
According to reporting on the audited accounts, the ₦11.2 trillion appears under “other receivables from Federation” and relates to advances to the Federal Government as well as costs incurred by NNPC in securing Nigeria’s oil and gas assets under an approved framework between the company and the government.
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In other words, the amount is recorded as money NNPC says it is entitled to recover from the Federation. It is therefore not accurate to automatically characterise the entire ₦11.2 trillion as cash paid directly to private security companies or as an ordinary operating expense.
A security bill larger than NNPC’s profit
The scale of the receivable nevertheless raises significant public-finance questions.
NNPC’s ₦11.2 trillion Federation-related balance is about ₦4 trillion higher than its ₦7.18 trillion profit after tax for 2025.
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It is also more than twice the approximately ₦4.9 trillion provided in Nigeria’s 2025 budget for defence and security, although the two figures are not directly comparable because the NNPC amount covers a different category of expenditure and receivables.
The comparison nonetheless illustrates the extraordinary scale of the petroleum-sector security arrangement.
Nigeria has for years faced crude-oil theft, pipeline vandalism, illegal refining and attacks on petroleum infrastructure. These problems have affected production and government revenues.
The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission has documented a substantial decline in reported oil theft in recent years. Its 2025 data showed average oil theft of about 10.18 thousand barrels per day between January and August 2025, compared with approximately 11.2 thousand barrels per day in 2024 and far higher levels in earlier years.
At the same time, NUPRC has continued to identify security, technology and human-resource investments as important factors in improving production stability and protecting petroleum infrastructure.
What exactly is covered by the ₦11.2 trillion?
That is now the central question.
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The wording in the financial disclosures refers to advances and costs incurred to secure the country’s oil and gas assets under an approved framework involving NNPC and the Federal Government.
But the public needs more detail about the composition of the amount.
How much represented actual security operations?
How much went to military or other government security agencies?
How much was paid to private contractors?
How much covered surveillance, intelligence, pipeline monitoring, marine security, logistics or other related activities?
And how much represented advances or other Federation-related transactions that should not be classified as security expenditure?
Without a detailed breakdown, the ₦11.2 trillion figure cannot by itself establish how much was actually spent on physical security.
The subsidy question
The accounts also revive questions about the way petroleum-related obligations to the Federation have been accounted for.
NNPC reported that no new “energy security expense” was recognised in 2025, compared with about ₦7.13 trillion in 2024.
However, the company also disclosed an ₦8.9 trillion defrayed energy-security cost from 2024, which was subsequently reconciled against amounts owed to the Federation, including royalties, taxes and dividends. The reconciliation was recorded in September 2025.
The arrangement means that the public debate over petroleum-sector deductions has not disappeared simply because the fuel-subsidy regime changed.
Instead, attention is now turning to how NNPC records and recovers different costs incurred on behalf of the Federal Government.
NNPC’s financial performance
Despite the questions surrounding the Federation-related receivables, NNPC reported a strong improvement in profitability.
The company recorded:
- ₦34.52 trillion in revenue
- ₦7.18 trillion profit after tax
- ₦12.8 trillion operating cash flow
- ₦18 trillion EBITDA
- ₦5.8 trillion declared dividend
NNPC also reported average crude oil and condensate production of 1.77 million barrels per day, its highest average level in five years. Total oil and condensate production reached 565.8 million barrels, while natural-gas production rose to more than 2,600 billion standard cubic feet.
The company attributed its stronger profitability to improved operational performance despite lower crude prices and reduced petroleum-product volumes following downstream deregulation.
Questions over transparency
The ₦11.2 trillion disclosure is therefore less a simple story about an unexplained “security bill” and more a question about transparency, classification and accountability in Nigeria’s petroleum finances.
If NNPC incurred billions or trillions of naira in costs protecting assets belonging to the Federation, Nigerians are entitled to understand the framework governing those expenditures.
They also need to know how the costs were approved, who received the funds, what services were delivered and how the government verified the claims before accepting them as liabilities or receivables.
This becomes particularly important because NNPC is now a commercial company operating under the Petroleum Industry Act, while simultaneously undertaking activities and transactions on behalf of the Federal Government.
The company itself says its transformation is intended to create value for its shareholders and the Nigerian people.
What Nigerians should demand
The disclosure raises several legitimate questions:
- What is the full approved framework?
NNPC and the Federal Government should publish the framework governing expenditure incurred to protect national oil and gas assets. - What makes up the ₦11.2 trillion?
A detailed breakdown would show how much was spent on security personnel, contractors, surveillance, logistics, infrastructure protection and other activities. - Who verified the expenditure?
Given the size of the amount, Nigerians need to know which government agencies reviewed and certified the underlying claims. - How much has actually been recovered?
Because the amount is presented as a Federation receivable, the government should disclose what has been settled, what remains outstanding and how settlement is being effected. - What measurable results were achieved?
The public should be able to compare the cost of protecting petroleum assets with changes in oil theft, pipeline vandalism, production losses and crude evacuation.
Nigeria’s oil industry has recorded significant improvements in production. NUPRC reported that crude oil and condensate output reached 1.735 million barrels per day in June 2026, with crude oil alone averaging 1.56 million barrels per day. The regulator attributed improved output partly to greater operational stability and the absence of major pipeline outages during the period.
Those gains are important. But they also make transparency over the cost of achieving them even more significant.
The ₦11.2 trillion disclosure should therefore prompt scrutiny—not assumptions.
The central issue for Nigerians is straightforward: if NNPC incurred ₦11.2 trillion in advances and costs connected to protecting national oil and gas assets, the public deserves a clear account of what the money covered, who received it, how it was verified and what results it produced.
Until those details are publicly available, the figure will remain one of the most significant and least understood components of Nigeria’s 2025 petroleum finances.
