Governor Nasiru el-Rufai of Kaduna state has referred to the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as a monster that must be tamed.
“Something fundamentally decisive must be done to tame this monster and we must have the political will to make all oil industry transactions transparent.”
At the 7th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture series in Abuja entitled “Nigeria and the Oil Fortune,” el-Rufai was sure that no one “can appreciate the gap between the vision of NNPC’s founding fathers, the beautiful baby of 1977 and the 38-year-old monster it has become than President Buhari.”
“The corruption and nonchalance that hobbled the NNPC are symptoms that its best days are over.
“We should give it a deserved funeral so that a new institution, active and nimble, can promptly replace it.”
The governor wanted the NNPC’s subsidiaries and associated companies to be reviewed, restructured and privatised or commercialised as appropriate and consistent with national interest and objectives.
He also wanted the government to review the Joint Venture strategy with the governing principle being to shift the financing and operational risks to the markets and operators respectively.
He asked the government to avoid owing the oil companies, and to proactively review the terms and implementation of the Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) and concentrate on collecting the royalties and taxes due to it.
“No one is better qualified to do this than the person that formed the NNPC through the merger of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation and the Ministry of Petroleum in 1977, President Muhammadu Buhari himself.
The Kaduna Chief Executive said that there should be clear rules and processes for licencing, concessioning, procurement and contracting, adding that the existing systems tend to be corrupt.
El-Rufai is happy however that President Buhari has already taken the commendable step of directing that all revenues be remitted either to the Federation Account or the consolidated revenue fund as required by sections 80 and 162 of the Constitution.
He said that the President was clear that oil industry revenues would no longer be treated as some slush fund of the Federal Government. [myad]
