Former Chairman, Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, Prof. Humphrey Asobie, accused past administrations of participating in corruption in the oil sector, saying that almost all the past leaders from 1973, had been indicted of one form of malfeasance or another in the petroleum sector by various reports, the Vanguard reports.
Asobie argued that argued that although political parties included fight against corruption in their manifestos, the truth of the matter is that they actually fund themselves through stealing public funds.
“And that is the major problem. In other words, if you look at the NNPC, it has been the source of funding for political parties all along, and where they are not getting from NNPC, they are getting from other sources,” he said.
Explaining further, he said: “in fighting corruption anywhere in the oil and gas sector, the assumption is that there are principals that are above corruption, and who, therefore, have an interest in implementing anti-corruption measures. That theory is wrong in the Nigerian case, because historically, it has been found through ad-hoc committees’ reports and so on, that the very head of state, himself, is involved in the process, and that makes it even more difficult for the head of state himself to lead the fight.”
Asobie said this whilst commenting on a report by the Nigerian Natural Resource Charter, NNRC, in collaboration with an international governance watchdog, Natural Resource Governance Institute, NRGI, made with regard to all the outstanding sums trapped in among individuals and operators in Nigeria’s petroleum industry.
The charge comes as the President Muhammadu Bahari’s administration is desperately looking for ways and means, including borrowings from offshore to fund its N6.01 trillion National Budget for 2016.