The Management of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has raised strong objection to the allegation of fraud against the Corporation by former Head of State and presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), describing it as “political mischief”.
In a statement made available to journalists, the Corporation stated that coming from a former Minister of Petroleum under whose watch a similar allegation of fraud was made, Buhari’s statement smacks of political mischief as he should know better than to peddle beer palour gossip as facts.
“It is sad that General Buhari, one of the founding fathers of the NNPC who himself has tasted of the virulent but false allegations deliberately concocted to cast the Corporation and the public sector management of the nation’s oil and gas industry in bad light, would be the one to allege that NNPC runs two sets of account books ‘one for public consumption and another for insiders’.
“We consider General Buhari’s allegation in bad taste as it is nothing but a deliberate political mischief calculated to cast the Corporation in opprobrium all in a bid to shore up his political capital.
“We find it difficult to understand how a former Head of State who has also served as Minister of Petroleum Resources could believe that NNPC keeps two sets of account books to perpetrate fraud, knowing that NNPC is the most audited and scrutinized agency in the country.
“In the past one year alone, the Corporation has had its books scrutinized and audited by the Senate Committee on Finance and an external auditor, PriceWaterhouseCooper (PWC). Is it possible for the accounting discrepancies insinuated by General Buhari to escape the attention of such internationally acclaimed auditors? And in any case, why would an alleged fraudulent Corporation keep two sets of accounting books knowing that such could be used as evidence against it?
“We hereby state emphatically that NNPC neither keeps two sets of account books nor is aware of the existence of such as the Corporation is run in line with international best practice.
“If General Buhari believes that such false information that are usually the subject of beer parlour gossip was true, would he rather that the Nigerian public believe that the allegation of missing $2.8 billion oil money against the NNPC under his watch as Minister of Petroleum was true?”
The Corporation called on members of the public to discountenance the allegation as there is no iota of truth in it.
