Ayorinde Oluokun/Abuja
Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, NNPC GMD
In terms of its timeliness, the appointment of Dr. Ibe Emmanuel Kachikwu as the Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC by President Muhammadu Buhari could not have come at a better time.
For one, the announcement of the former vice chairman and General Counsel for ExxonMobil in Africa was made less than 24 hours after a report by Natural Resource Governance Institutes (NRGI), a non-profit again confirmed the unenviable status of the Corporation as a behemoth of corruption in dire need of urgent radical reforms.
The report, one of several of such arising from investigations and probes in which the Corporation has been indicted of corrupt practices on all fronts, detailed how the nation has been shortchanged to the tune of about $32 billion from the so called crude oil swap arrangements, non remittance of revenue earned on behalf of the country from sale of petroleum products to the national treasury and other shenanigans involving domestic crude allocation.
NRGI particularly noted that the management of oil sales by NNPC’s oil began to deteriorate seriously as from 2010 under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The NRGI report collaborates similar reports by the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI, PwC among others.
Former central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi was sacked after pointing out that $20 billion had not been remitted by NNPC between January 2012 and July 2013. Also in June, the National Economic Council said the NNPC had earned 8.1 trillion naira ($41 billion) from 2012 until May 2015, but only paid 4.3 trillion to the federal government.
Significantly, the institute noted that NNPC’s mismanagement of public revenues and its performance failures has persisted due to lack of political will by successive governments to reform the corporation.
Yet, the imperative for reforms of the Corporation …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
