Transparency International Nigeria has blamed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his predecessors, Muhammadu Buhari and Olusegun Obasanjo, for the years of unaccounted remittances and fraud in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
The TI Nigeria country director, Auwal Rafsanjani, made this known in an exclusive interview with DAILY POST on Monday.
This comes as the World Bank Nigeria Development Update report released last week indicted the state-owned company over failure to remit crude revenue amounting to N500 billion to the Federation account for October 2024 and December 2024.
A detail of the revelation in the World Bank’s NDU report showed that the N1.1 trillion revenue from crude sales and other income in 2024, the NNPCL only remitted N600 billion, leaving a deficit of N500 billion.
The unaccounted N500 billion has stirred controversies over a lack of transparency and corruption in the country’s oil behemoth, NNPCL.
Similarly, the International Monetary Fund had also called for a more transparent transfer of fuel subsidy gains by the NNPCL in its recent report.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, on Sunday raised the bar on calls for a thorough probe of the unremitted N500 billion fund by the NNPCL.
UGAMATV reports that the financial opaqueness of NNPCL has continued unhindered despite the president being the substantive minister of petroleum. Since 1999, of the five Nigerian presidents, three were substantive petroleum ministers, including Obasanjo, Buhari, and, most recently, Tinubu.
Reacting, Rafsanjani blamed the rot in NNPCL on Nigeria’s presidents and the National Assembly.
According to him, the probe of NNPCL finances needs to go beyond its former Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari.
He explained that the financial transactions of the state-owned oil firm should be comprehensively audited to unravel all the missing money lost since 1999.
Rafsanjani also blamed the National Assembly for the lack of an adequate oversight function on a critical government agency such as the NNPCL.
He kicked against Nigerian presidents appointing themselves as petroleum ministers.
“The need to carry out a comprehensive audit of NNPCL is necessary to ascertain the level of financial transactions under Mele Kyari and other leadership of NNPCL.
“If we want to have a comprehensive audit to know all the missing money lost from 1999 to date, it is only a thorough audit that will ascertain this. It is not only Mele Kyari, but it has to be comprehensive.
“All these happened under the president, who is the substantive petroleum minister. The president is responsible. Whether Buhari, Tinubu, or Obasanjo. That is why we have advocated for a substantive minister of petroleum.
“They must stop appointing themselves as ministers of petroleum. This showed that the National Assembly is not carrying out its oversight function. So it is a shame. The indictment should be sent to the president and the National Assembly for the mess in NNPCL.
“The subsidy is not the problem, but the corruption in the process is. The missing money must be recovered and used for the good of all Nigerians,” he said.
