Buhari Should Kill NNPC Before It Kills Nigeria, Says El-Rufai

The NNPC (Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation) must die!” These were the words of the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, in Abuja on Monday.

A visibly angry El-Rufai, while speaking at the 7th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series, lambasted the national oil firm for being run like a parallel government, adding that he was hopeful that the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari would “kill” the corporation.

The governor called for the setting up of another national oil firm as he argued that the present NNPC would kill Nigeria if it was allowed to continue running. “If you don’t kill the NNPC, it will kill Nigeria,” El-Rufai said.

According to him, the oil firm is riddled with corruption and until it is destroyed completely and rebuilt from the scratch, there will be no headway for Nigeria.

El-Rufai argued that with his experience as a former Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprise, it was possible to destroy a bad organization and turn it into a good firm.

He maintained that Nigeria’s collective wealth was being feasted upon by the less than 1,000 employees of the corporation, alleging that the NNPC only remitted 42 per cent of what it ought to remit to the Federal Government for about three years.

The governor used statistics to defend his recommendation on why the current NNPC must be destroyed

He said in 2014, the country produced on the average about 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day, while importing most of its daily consumption of 43.5 million litres of refined petroleum products.

He stated that the reliance on imports of refined products led to unsustainable expenses on questionable subsidy payments, exemplified by the $8.99bn spent in the 18 months between January 2012 and June 2013.

El-Rufai said, “About N971bn was budgeted for subsidy payments in 2014 alone (more than twice that was eventually paid). You all recall how trillions of naira were paid out as oil subsidy in 2011, when only N254bn was appropriated. No one has been successfully prosecuted for this scam. Huge deficits in gas supply have ensured that the country’s thermal plants cannot produce power at optimal levels.

“In the eight years leading up to 2014, joint venture production declined by 50.4 per cent. Some 100,000 barrels per day, about five per cent of total production, is estimated to be lost to organised theft. And we all dread the ease and rapidity with which supply shortages lead to endless queues, widespread panic and mortal consequences for the many victims of tanker accidents.

“The long and short of the situation of our oil industry is best exemplified by the parallel government called the NNPC. In 2012, it sold N2.77tn of ‘domestic’ crude oil but paid only N1.66tn to the Federation Account. In 2013, it earned N2.66tn but paid N1.56tn to FAAC; in 2014, (it earned) N2.64tn, but remitted N1.44tn; while between January and May 2015, it earned N733.36bn and remitted only N473.2bn.

“That means that the NNPC only remitted about 58 per cent of the monies earned between 2012 and the first half of 2015. A company with the audacity to retain 42 per cent of a country’s money has become a veritable parallel republic!”

The governor noted that the NNPC felt entitled to consume more resources than the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, and the Federal Government combined.

“The example just given is only with respect to domestic crude oil sale. Similar leakages exist in the NPDC, NAPIMS procurement and subsidiary budgets,” he added.