For four years, the Federation Account got less than it was owed. A forensic audit is now trying to count what's missing.

Nigeria's states have been receiving less than their constitutional share of oil revenue since 2021. Not because of leakage. Not because of fraud. Because the law allowed it.

The Petroleum Industry Act, signed that year, gave NNPC a 30% management fee on profit oil and profit gas from production sharing contracts. It also gave the company Frontier Exploration funds and redirected gas flare penalties into a separate infrastructure fund. All of that money came out before the Federation Account received anything. States and local governments got what was left.

Tinubu's executive order of February 13 suspended all of that. The 30% management fee is paused. The Frontier Exploration deduction is gone. Gas flare penalties now go directly to the Federation Account. The order has been gazetted.

And now, a forensic audit of NNPC is underway. The Ministry of Finance confirmed it last Friday. It's examining not just current flows but historical ones — reconstructing what the Federation Account should have received during the years those deductions were running.

The number it's chasing is large. NNPC reported ₦60.5 trillion in revenue in 2025 and ₦5.76 trillion in after-tax profit. What portion of that was built on fees the Federation Account was never meant to fund? The auditors are trying to find out.

Here's the pattern. The PIA was passed in 2021 as a reform bill. It commercialised NNPC, which was supposed to make it more efficient. What it also did was create legal structures through which Federation revenues could be retained before distribution. States that depend on FAAC allocations for 80% of their budgets spent four years being shorted by a mechanism that had been written into law.

The executive order reverses the mechanism. The audit tries to measure the damage. Neither of them explains why it took four years to notice.