Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

NEC Appoints Committee To Probe NNPC

By Akindele Ayomiku
03 July 2015   |   12:01 am
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), 10-Member board, was dissolved Friday and the National Executive Council has said that the NNPC spent 3.8 trillion naira in the past three years without approval. Edo state governor Adams Oshiomole briefed State House correspondents about the findings after the inauguration of the National Economic Council at the Presidential Villa…

NNPC-RefineryThe Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), 10-Member board, was dissolved Friday and the National Executive Council has said that the NNPC spent 3.8 trillion naira in the past three years without approval. Edo state governor Adams Oshiomole briefed State House correspondents about the findings after the inauguration of the National Economic Council at the Presidential Villa yesterday.

The Council raised a four-member committee to probe the misappropriation of funds by the NNPC.  Members of the committee include Governors Adams Oshiomole of Edo state, Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom, Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna.

The four-man committee will check the books of NNPC, most especially the issue of excess crude and what is not remitted into the Federation Account.

Speaking to CNBC Africa on the transparency of the NNPC, Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Financial Derivatives, says NNPC is only allowed to “keep 25% of all the revenues received, account for it and spend according to budgetary approval so, how did they keep 46% for themselves?”

He also mentioned that the crude swap arrangements were not monitored by the NNPC which resulted in a loss of money and he stated that it is a very ‘opaque’ type of transaction.

Rewane also said that apart from the NNPC, there are many agencies of government that are not rendering adequate, proper and transparent disclosed returns to the consolidated revenue fund account.

On the unveiling of this huge unpaid amount by the NNPC , Rewane says he is ‘alarmed’ at the fact that money can be hanging there when state Governments cannot pay salaries, contractors obligations are defaulted and some of the bonds payments are being delayed.

Rewane, on the committee setup, believes we have good hands to look into the buried monies but seeing that they have their own states to run, a sub-committee should have been created to monitor this and report to the main committee comprising of those governors.

He emphasized the importance of blocking the leakages and setting in motion, a process which does not allow for leakages. He mentioned that the problems starting from the structural, process and people problems should be resolved. “If the structural problem that allows for this activity is not resolved, it’s is only a matter of time before the new people and the new processes will be abused”, Rewane said.

DISSOLVING THE NNPC BOARD
Rewane said; “Dissolving the NNPC board is nothing, you have to remove those opportunities, those distortions that allow this to happen. As long as you continue to have subsidies in the system, subsidies will be abused.

A subsidised price is a disequivated price, it creates a gap and that gap has to be bridged. In bridging that gap, the process to bridge will be abused and the people who are to administer that process will be corrupted, so until the structural problem is solved, it is only a question of time to rid corrupt people and broken processes. “

Based on reports that Buhari will oversee the probing process, Rewane says, “Even if you bring the pope to come and run the NNPC, as long as the structural processes are wrong, it won’t take long before people will abuse that under him.”

Rewane concludes by saying that ‘there is no way anybody can stop the process until the structural problems are addressed by removing the things that foster corrupt processes.’

0 Comments