The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) viewed the widely published report of the Nuhu Ribadu-led Oil revenue task force as portending grave danger for the survival of the Nigerian state. It would be
recalled that, in the wake of the removal of the Oil subsidy (coupled with the attendant anti-subsidy removal protests), the Jonathan-led Federal Government empanelled this 21-member committee as a way of assessing the ten-year accrued revenue of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The major highlights of the report revealed that:
• N86.6 Billion in cash from generous exchange rates over the 10-year period had disappeared.
• The NNPC had been getting 445,000 barrels per day of crude oil for local refining and consumption but had been selling itself this oil at cut-down prices, a practice that had cost Nigeria $5Billion in
potential oil revenue in the same period.
• Nigerian oil ministers (between 2008 and 2011) handed out seven discretionary licenses, with $183million in signature bonuses missing from the deals.
• $1.5 Billion (in unpaid royalties) owed by Addax.
• N137.57Billion debt owed by Shell for gas sold.
• Nigeria is the ONLY Nation to sell all its crude through International oil traders rather than directly to refineries, deals usually enmeshed in opacity.
The corruption in the Oil Industry has reached the crescendo in the 13-year reign of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with unbudgeted Trillions of Naira (ostensibly used in corrupting the electoral
process in 2011). The infernal nature of the corruptive tendencies in the Oil Industry (under PDP) is seen in the pains inflicted on the Nigerian people in getting unfettered access to petroleum products for
their daily needs. Worse still, despite a six-time increments in petroleum pump prices (between 1999 and 2007), the PDP governments produced, thus far, seemed unfazed about hurts and the pains inflicted
by the heist and the deliberate purloining of the Nation’s oil resources (under their watch). It is, without doubt, the reason that a new generation of people has been ennobled into the super-rich Nigerians, on behalf of the rest of us.
In all of this, it is bewildering to contemplate the fact that a report submitted to the Minister of Petroleum resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, since late August is still said to be a mere draft,
without clear timelines on when the final document would be submitted. Is the Honourable Minister showing, with her body language, that this administration is only interested in laying subterfuge for an
anti-corruption war in the Oil Industry that it does not intend to pursue with scrupulous diligence? The CPC Party has always postulated: the Jonathan administration is not only the most corrupt in the
nation’s history but it is also capable of throwing the Nigerian state into unrecoverable downward spiral of Economic depression.
Finally, we hereby warn that, like all other reports that have remained unimplemented, this must not suffer the same fate. It is our considered opinion that it serves the greater good that, being a
mono-Economy, the government must be seen in supporting efforts at maintaining probity in the oil industry.
God bless Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC.
