Group Managing Director, NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has yet to provide document from the Presidency authorizing it to trade 445,000 barrels of crude oil under its Refined Product Exchange Agreement contracts three weeks after it was directed by a committee of the House of Representatives to do so.
Findings showed that the corporation had also not provided any evidence of the resolutions of its board endorsing the transactions, reports
The Punch.
The transactions involved the exchange of crude oil for refined petroleum products in which the corporation gave out 445,000 barrels of crude daily to trading companies. This has placed the corporation at loggerheads with the legislators.
Problem started when the House investigating the transactions through an ad hoc committee chaired by a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from Kwara State, Zakari Mohammed asked the NNPC to produce all documents relating to its transactions. The House however insisted that presidential approvals and evidence of board resolutions must be tendered too.
“This is the third week since the committee requested the corporation to provide the presidential approval and the resolutions of its board. None of these vital documents has reached the committee’s secretariat,” a senior National Assembly official lamented on Tuesday in Abuja.
On November 12, the committee publicly complained that the NNPC was frustrating the investigation by refusing to avail it documents it requested. It was gathered that as of Tuesday, the two documents had not been produced by the corporation. Mohammed on Tuesday confirmed that the corporation had not submitted the presidential approval and board resolutions.
It would be recalled that the House had, on June 24, passed a resolution, approving the probe of the deals on account of allegations that nine companies benefited from the contracts through the Pipelines Product Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC. On the list were Duke Oil, Mercuria, Sahara Group, Aitero, Glencore, Taleveras Nigeria Limited, Entena Oil and Gas, Tranfigura and Ontario Oil and Gas.
How this drama will play out is still in the minds of many Nigerians who cannot understand how a corporation could flout orders from the lawmakers without any consequences. Many also wonder why it is taking the NNPC so much time to tender evidence of transactions which should be handy anytime for verification.