With its tattered reputation, the expectation is that the NNPC will carry on its corruption-stained operations below the radar. But no. It won’t. It must behave like the typical Nigerian politician and institution. It must be loud and given to attempting to ridicule. That will only be the explanation for its recent ‘invitation’ to a former president, Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) to tour the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries which it claimed it had revamped after decades of their being comatose
There has been no contest, at least not in the last 20 years, about the most opaque government corporation in Nigeria. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (Company) Limited (NNPCL) holds that dubious record. The corporation is synonymous with corruption and brazen lack of accountability. Most times it operates like a parallel government. It sells the country’s crude oil and spends the proceeds as suits its fancy. There are some fancy agencies in that sector, but in reality the NNPC is the operator and the regulator in Nigeria’s oil business. It does not really know how much crude oil is extracted from the belly of Nigeria; it does not know how much is exported; it does not know how much is earned; and, it does not account to anybody. But all the claims or pretentions not to know the critical aspects of its operations are down to one thing: corruption. The company is almost adept at pulling the wools over our eyes. I say ‘almost adept’ because it actually hides under the cover of successive presidents of the country to carry out its heists. Except probably during the presidency of Jonathan, other presidents since 1999 had served as presidents and oil ministers at the same time. Nigeria’s current president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu is also the minister of petroleum resources.
It has to be said that the corruption in the corporation was no less when Jonathan ceded the oil ministry portfolio and supervision of the NNPC to Mrs. Diezani Allison – Madueke. She is right now a fugitive from the law who is hibernating somewhere in the United Kingdom, a country that is notorious for warehousing proceeds of corruption from third world countries’ rulers. The UK is also a beneficiary of centuries of slavery of Africans and black people on whose backs and sufferings it built its evil empire and criminal wealth. It has stoutly resisted taking responsibility for its cruelty, and paying reparations. Meanwhile, that woman whose former husband, a retired Navy General, and officer and gentleman, has since issued a cease and desist order on her use of his name, clutches the international passport of one obscure island nation ostensibly to escape justice in Nigeria. It’s curious that successive regimes since 2015 when the All Progressives Congress (APC) came to power, all attempts to extradite Diezani had failed. The reasons for the seeming failure of the current and past APC administrations to extradite the former oil minister should not be difficult to decipher – the potential revelations from her and her collaborators in the grand theft of our commonwealth during that era will splash mud on present and past rulers. The failure is a grand cover up for the exploiting class.
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For many years the NNPC did not publish any audited accounts of its operations. And it did not explain why. For years, and up till now, the former governor of the central bank, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has been asking NNPC the whereabouts of proceeds from the sales of our crude oil. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, Sanusi accused the NNPC and that administration of carrying out hanky-panky with crude oil export proceeds running into tens of billions of dollars. Sanusi was subsequently suspended as CBN governor, an audit firm was quickly recruited by the accused administration to probe Sanusi’s allegations. The outcome was what you suspected it would be – a clean bill of health for that regime and its corporation. But Sanusi who later became the emir of Kano, and then former emir after he was dethroned, and now back to power as a co-emir of the same Kano, will not be silenced in spite of his travails. He still believes that the NNPC is among the worst afflictions to befall this country in the management of its crude oil resources. Well, NNPC is the automated teller machine (ATM) of the federal government. So it works in concert with any sitting president and his administration. In terms of sleaze, it competes annually for the first position with our judges, police officers, Customs men, among others.
“Let’s talk about the refineries. I know people are excited about it but I have a completely different view. Is it good that they are functioning? You bet but at what cost? Let’s look at a few things. 1. The (Muhammadu) Buhari administration borrowed $3bn to fix the refineries, $1.5bn for PH, then $1.5bn for both Warri and Kaduna. I wrote against it then because it (made) no sense at all. Why fix before selling? 2. Selling it (for) $750m in 2007 or even lower price would have been better for the nation (and) I am sure you know about Eleme Petrochemicals that for 10 years it was operating at 20-25% capacity utilisation but the first year under Indorama operated at 100% capacity, made profit and dividends paid about $74m.
With its tattered reputation, the expectation is that the NNPC will carry on its corruption-stained operations below the radar. But no. It won’t. It must behave like the typical Nigerian politician and institution. It must be loud and given to attempting to ridicule. That will only be the explanation for its recent ‘invitation’ to a former president, Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007) to tour the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries which it claimed it had revamped after decades of their being comatose. Part of Obasanjo’s crime was that he reported how he had offered refineries to an international oil company (IOC) to operate in a public private partnership (PPP) arrangement, or to purchase them outright. The IOC concerned politely declined the offer. Then he got a Nigerian consortium led by the serial investor Aliko Dangote to pay the federal government about $750m for one of the refineries after being advised that that would be a prudent thing to do. He said he was told that the refinery in question was tending towards being designated as a scrap. However, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who succeeded Obasanjo as president in 2007 aborted the sale on grounds of alleged conflict of interest, and refunded the money paid for the refinery. So 17 years later NNPC wants to taunt Obasanjo for saying that the corruption -infested corporation lacked the capacity to effectively and efficiently manage Nigeria’s refineries.
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Obasanjo was right in 2007 and he will be vindicated. Given its present structure and composition, in spite of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which has been implemented in the breach since it debut, the NNPCL cannot profitably run the country’s four refineries – two in Port Harcourt and one each in Warri and Kaduna. The truth is that Obasanjo’s vindication is not in the future. It has already happened. NNPC’s attempt to gloat and ridicule the former president is not just disrespectful and gross but grotesque. We cannot have two of NNPC’s refineries said to be working at whatever capacity, and a private mega refinery also on stream, in addition to other functional modular refineries, and yet the corporation insists that it would continue to import petroleum products with our scarce foreign exchange. Furthermore, the operations of the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries are mired in controversies. The deal in the raft of resuscitation of the refineries appears to be to give a flailing regime the semblance of a win whilst the corporation’s henchmen and their collaborators in government continue their looting spree.
But more importantly in Obasanjo’s vindication is in the murky details of the things that have gone into the so-called rehabilitation of the refineries. If we go back to 25 years, the federal government may have expended about $25bn on the refineries so far. This is more than the amount committed by a private entity to deliver a single train refinery which has been described as the eight wonder of the world with about twice the combined capacities of our museum piece four refineries. One of two things will happen to the NNPC refineries – they will collapse sooner than later or they will be kept on life support at huge public expense to create the impression that they are working. No one needs to be an expert on refineries nor possess the power of clairvoyance to discern that a fraud is being foisted on Nigerians.
Now let’s examine the fraud that the NNPC is perpetrating on our people by its hanging onto the refineries, and giving the impression that they are part of the solution to the country’s energy deficits and crises. I will almost entirely reproduce the analysis done by a diaspora Nigerian in one of the WhatsApp platforms that I belong to. Both pro- and anti- extant regime are agreed that this particular member is usually dispassionate in his interventions. He wrote last week in response to a comment: “Let’s talk about the refineries. I know people are excited about it but I have a completely different view. Is it good that they are functioning? You bet but at what cost? Let’s look at a few things. 1. The (Muhammadu) Buhari administration borrowed $3bn to fix the refineries, $1.5bn for PH, then $1.5bn for both Warri and Kaduna. I wrote against it then because it (made) no sense at all. Why fix before selling? 2. Selling it (for) $750m in 2007 or even lower price would have been better for the nation (and) I am sure you know about Eleme Petrochemicals that for 10 years it was operating at 20-25% capacity utilisation but the first year under Indorama operated at 100% capacity, made profit and dividends paid about $74m.
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“In just one year it produced polymer of 135,000MT, more than 10 years production (compared with the old order). 3. The refineries were owing NNPC N4.5tn as at 2023 yet the capital vote for TETFUND in 2025 is N940bn. In a report last year, $25bn (had) been spent on refineries, why holding on to them? 4. What is the capacity utilisation of these refineries now for the recent $3bn spent to resuscitate them? Remember Project Gazelle, we went to borrow $3.2bn paying back with 90,000 (barrels) per day of crude (oil), mortgaging future revenues. So why should we borrow $3bn to fix a refinery we want to sell rather why don’t we sell as it is and no matter how small walk away. Chelsea (London – based football club) was sold for over £4bn recently but in 1982 it was sold for £1 just to get it off the books”. The understanding is that when assets become liabilities, you place a nominal value on them and get them off the books. Nigeria’s four refineries have become liabilities. It will be the height of fraud to expend billions of dollars on them as the NNPC is currently doing and then turn around to put them in the market to sell at nominal prices. And all indications are that this is the game that the NNPC and the government are playing. To them no scam on Nigerians is too big.
