The Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force (PRSTF) was constituted in February 2012 by Minister of Petroleum Resources Diezani Alison-Madueke, against the backdrop of the nationwide fuel subsidy protests that had exposed massive irregularities in Nigeria's oil sector. The Task Force was chaired by Nuhu Ribadu—former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Nigeria's then-most prominent anti-corruption figure. Its fifteen-member team included forensic accountants, oil industry engineers, and legal experts. The mandate was to conduct a comprehensive review of petroleum revenues from upstream production through to federation account remittances, covering the years 2002 to 2012.
The Task Force produced a 146-page final report submitted to the minister in August 2012. The report was marked 'Confidential Draft' and not officially published, but was leaked to BBC and Reuters in November 2012, triggering international attention. Its core finding was that Nigeria had lost an estimated $29 billion in oil and gas revenues over the preceding decade through a combination of under-pricing in production-sharing contracts and joint-venture arrangements, deliberate under-lifting, crude swap (offshore processing agreement) deals struck at below-market rates, and fraudulent domestic subsidy claims. Government officials were found to have colluded with international oil companies to structure deals that systematically diverted revenues away from the federation account. The domestic crude allocation system—under which NNPC was entitled to purchase crude at official prices for domestic refining—was identified as a primary vector for leakage, as much of the allocated crude was exported rather than refined, with proceeds unaccounted for.
Specific findings included that NNPC's upstream subsidiary NAPIMS had not been collecting cash-call contributions from JV partners with rigour, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars uncollected, and that the OPA (Offshore Processing Agreement) arrangements had cost the federation between $6.8 billion and $8 billion in foregone revenue during the review period. The report recommended the restructuring of NNPC, full commercialisation of the upstream sector, abolition of the kerosene and PMS subsidy frameworks, and independent auditing of all PSC and JV receipts. The Ribadu Report was never formally adopted by the government as policy; Alison-Madueke's ministry acknowledged receipt without committing to implementation. It remains one of the most consequential leaked documents in Nigerian petroleum governance history.