The Senate has
commended the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) for responding to the
motion moved during a plenary session by
Senator Kabiru Marafa, chairman, Committee
on Petroleum Downstream Sector, on the
theft of petroleum products kept in the farm
tanks of two oil companies and urged the
corporation to take more radical measures to
avoid recurrence.
Aliyu Sabi, Abuja:
In a statement by its spokesman, Senator
Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the legislative chamber
advised that NNPC should go beyond the
sacking and redeployment of a few officials
but initiate a comprehensive restructuring of
its operations which presently allow officials
and other firms to appropriate national
resources for their personal use, thereby
contributing to the suffering of the people.
“The Senate is appalled that NNPC is not
contemplating on doing something about the
involvement of officials of the Petroleum
Products Marketing Company (PPMC) which
actually played key roles in the missing
products case.
“It is instructive that NNPC did not do
anything on the case until the matter was
raised on the floor of the Senate and the
press picked the matter up from the motion.”
“The unauthorised sale of 132 million litres of
fuel kept in the storage tanks of MRS and
Capital Oil designated as strategic reserves is
a grave occurrence. This probably is not the
first time it is happening and NNPC must
review its operations. It should in fact carry
out a shake up in the PPMC,” Abdullahi
stated.
It will be recalled that following the Senate
debate of the motion on the theft of the fuel,
the NNPC sacked two senior officials and
redeployed a few others. Its spokesman, Ndu
Ughamadu said the sack and deployment
were in line with the on-going reforms the
corporation initiated to cleanse it of
corruption.
The NNPC lost 130 million litres through a
breach in its throughput transactions with
MRS and Capital Oil. However, MRS had
returned the product it sold from the stock
but Capital Oil is yet to refund the 82 million
litres it sold. The Missing fuel sold by Capital
Oil is valued at N11 billion.
While Capital Oil insisted that NNPC owed it
on past business transactions, the
corporation vowed to recover the products,
investigate the breach and set up new
modalities to guide its engagements of
throughput partners.