The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) today criticized the predilection of Nigeria’s PDP-led Federal Government to cronyism and opaqueness in its activities, as the party questioned whether the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC) decree allows the corporation to keep back statutory earnings from the coffers of Nigeria.
The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) today criticized the predilection of Nigeria’s PDP-led Federal Government to cronyism and opaqueness in its activities, as the party questioned whether the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation's (NNPC) decree allows the corporation to keep back statutory earnings from the coffers of Nigeria.
“What is bewildering is how this administration has iniquitously used its apparent rapaciousness as a subterfuge for drawing more ‘blood’ from the already ‘bloodied’ Nigerian citizenry,” it said in a statement signed by Rotimi Fashakin, on the probe by the House of Representatives of the NNPC’s indebtedness to the federation account.
The Congress observed that the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has clarified that the NNPC owes N842 billion to that account, and not the N450 billion the corporation admits to.
The CPC expressed dismay that the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, had attempted to defend the allegations by glibly telling the Joint Committee on Finance, Petroleum Resources and Gas Resources that the NNPC budget is not an appropriated budget but functions like a private commercial enterprise.
Mrs. Alison-Madueke had argued that the NEITI report did not capture the credit period of N389.5 billion. “If this (N389.5 billion) is deducted from N842.7 billion, you will get N450.7 billion, which is why we are here.”
But the CPC thundered back, “Does it not smack of tardiness to make deductions from Nigeria’s earnings that were not appropriated for, since the budgeted expenditure for subsidy was N240 billion?”
It lamented a situation where a corporation that was supposed to be a cash-cow for the Nigerian nation has instead become “a liability and cesspool of odious illegality, shenanigans and under-the-table transactions.”
The CPC further noted that the NEITI Chief Executive has also accused the NNPC of having several discrepancies and flaws in its transactions, a charge it says has been corroborated by the discovery of NNPC’s secret account operations in the course of the legislative probe.
The Congress outlined other unanswered questions in this “culture of infernal impunity” to include:
• Why was the accepted N450.7 billion not paid into the Federation account?
• What specific ‘operation’ or ‘project’ was the fund used to execute?
• Is there a nexus between this profligate expenditure and the financing of the electioneering campaigns of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in the April 2011 elections?
•Would that state of bankruptcy account for the strident call for removal of oil subsidy?
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