The Nigerian Senate has commended the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) for responding to the motion moved during a plenary session
by Senator
Kabiru Marafa, chairman, Committee on Petroleum Downstream Sector,
on the theft of petroleum products kept in the farm tanks of two oil companies
and urged the corporation to take more radical measures to avoid recurrence.
In a statement obtained by Politics Nigeria, signed by the spokesman of
the senate, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the legislative chamber advised that
NNPC should go beyond the sacking and redeployment of a few officials but
initiate a comprehensive restructuring of its operations which presently allow
officials and other firms to appropriate national resources for their personal
use, thereby contributing to the suffering of the people.
“The Senate is appalled that NNPC is not contemplating on doing something
about the involvement of officials of the Petroleum Products Marketing Company
(PPMC) which actually played key roles in the missing products case.
“It is instructive that NNPC did not do anything on the case until the
matter was raised on the floor of the Senate and the press picked the matter up
from the motion.”
“The unauthorised sale of 132 million litres of fuel kept in the storage
tanks of MRS and Capital Oil designated as strategic reserves is a grave
occurrence. This probably is not the first time it is happening and NNPC must
review its operations. It should, in fact, carry out a shake-up in the PPMC,”
Abdullahi stated.
It will be recalled that following the Senate debate on the motion on the
theft of the fuel, the NNPC sacked two senior officials and redeployed a few
others. Its spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu said the sack and deployment were in line
with the on-going reforms the corporation initiated to cleanse it of
corruption.
The NNPC lost 130 million litres through a breach in its throughput
transactions with MRS and Capital Oil. However, MRS had returned the product it
sold from the stock but Capital Oil is yet to refund the 82 million litres it
sold. The Missing fuel sold by Capital Oil is valued at N11 billion.
While Capital Oil insisted that NNPC owed it on past business
transactions, the corporation vowed to recover the products, investigate the
breach and set up new modalities to guide its engagements of throughput
partners.
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