The Nigerian 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.
In a statement obtained by
Politics Nigeria, signed by the spokesman of the senate, 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 on 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.
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