The Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, has noted with grave concern the portent of the damning report released by the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on the state of affairs in the Nation’s oil Industry. In the report, NEITI was reported to have unearthed the irregularities and arbitrariness that attended the operation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), especially between 2009 and 2011.
A summary of the report is given as:
Nigeria’s oil earnings (between 2009 and 2011) stood at $143.5Billion, which is equivalent of N21.525 Trillion; an amount far more than five times the entire budget for 2013.
Curious rise by 110% of fuel subsidy payment from N198 Billion in 2009 to N416 Billion in 2010.
Fuel subsidy Payment rose from N198Billion in 2009 to N786Billion in 2011 representing a colossal 297% jump!
NNPC removed subsidy payment directly from money earned (from crude sales) before remittance to the Federation account, a dubious practice that sought to distort proper accounting and further accentuating the opaque dealings in the oil industry under the Jonathan regime.
NNPC owed the Federation account N1.305 Trillion from crude oil sales in the 3-year period as at December 2011.
NNPC owed $4.84 Billion (N726 Billion) in dividends and loan payments from NNLG export business (between 2009 and 2011) and another $3.99 (N549 Billion) in NNLG funds from previous years going back to 1999.
NNPC received 445,000 Barrels per day for refining locally but only uses 20% because of the parlous state of Nigeria’s refineries; the remaining 80% sold as crude.
Undoubtedly, the implication of this report, aside revealing the NNPC (under the Jonathan regime) as a citadel of institutionalized corruption, there are other salient issues that leave soul grapes in the mouth!
Would the curious N318 Billion increment of the 2010 fuel subsidy payment over the 2009 figure explain the source of the hitherto unexplained huge campaign expenditure of President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2011 Presidential election?
How and where did the NNPC get the authorization to deduct fuel subsidy payments from crude oil sales before remittance into the Federation account? This, obviously, is in breach of the policy of the constitutional provision of remittance of all earnings to the Federation account!
Why did NNPC withhold the N1.305Trillion meant to be remitted to the Federation account over a three-year period? Where and who is still keeping the money?
Why did NNPC refuse to remit the $4.73 Billion collected from NNLG over the two-year period (2009-2011)?
Is it not capricious that, out of the 445,000 barrels per day meant for local consumption, NNPC sells 356,000 barrels per day thereby making revenue amounting to about $35.6 million daily, despite the Nigerian people’s continued suffering from prohibitive fuel sales without any reasonable palliative or safety nest?
Is there any reasonable juxtaposition of the N21.525 Trillion made from crude oil sales in the two-year period and the infrastructural development within the polity in the same dispensation?
Is it not despicable that Nigeria, being a mono-economy, is being short-changed from reaping fully from the resources from oil?
As a Party, we share the anguish of all Nigerians that the NNPC, in the last three years, has become a cesspool of audacious corruptive tendencies! The putrefaction of this disheveling perturbation has brought much disorder in the Nigerian polity. The burgeoning army of unemployed youths and the attendant socio-economic implications arising from the legendary heist in the NNPC also portend grave danger for the Nigerian state. It is our strong belief that the President of the Nation, as the ultimate executive authority, bears responsibility for this infra-dig. We hereby call on the National Assembly to restore order through the constitutional provision for bringing errant executive authority to path of straightness! It is the irreducible minimum that can be done for ensuring the enduring legacy of constitutional democracy.
God bless Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC
Friday, February 01, 2013.
