Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation must die or else the corporation will kill Nigeria.
el-Rufai said this while speaking at the 7th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series.
He said “If you don’t kill the NNPC, it will kill Nigeria.
“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!”
He added that “An efficient and productive oil sector, able to create jobs, spur industrialisation and earn more revenues, requires that we tackle the monster that the NNPC has become. This country can no longer afford to maintain an NNPC that arrogantly, unlawfully and unconstitutionally spends an unhealthy proportion of national oil earnings on itself.
“We should replace the NNPC with brand new organisations that are fit for purpose, among others, a commercialised and corporatised national oil company, and new industry regulators. This new national oil company should be capitalised once and for all, and then freed to fend for itself like other national oil companies do, seeking its financing independently from the financial markets and paying due taxes and royalties.”