- President Muhammadu Buhari, on Monday, explained that its delay in moving against the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, was because it is trying to establish the magnitude of fraud and inefficiencies the corporation, and the nation’s oil and gas industry had been involved with over the last couple of years.
- He was speaking in an interview on the Nigerian Television Authority’s, NTA, ‘Good Morning Nigeria,’ programme, President Muhammadu Buhari moted that the government is already working with some individuals that are helping it to track the destination of stolen crude oil and the accounts the proceeds are paid into.
He said, “Frankly, I read the stories too that I intend to break up the NNPC. I think the best way to go about it is to establish the fact of the magnitude of the inefficient ways the NNPC conducted itself. When we do that we will be on a higher moral ground to carry out whatever recommendations that have been made to us.”
“We have to maintain high confidentiality so that we do not put at risk, some of the Nigerians that are helping us to trace some of the destination of this stolen crude and then the account where they are being paid into instead of the federal government account.
“I do not think the NNPC knows how many accounts are outside there, which payments are being made for Nigerian crude which is really an outright theft. The money we want to intercept which have been going on for a number of years, a lot of Nigerians will not comprehend,” he explained.
- Buhari lamented the fact that the crude oil swap programme has over the years been used to defraud the country, stating also that a number of operators in the oil and gas industry have displayed lack of conscience and love for the country.
He continued, “These individuals have refineries all over the world. The swapping, is tied into a major killing ground for corrupt officials with an average evil to loot the country’s crude, work out how much they can bring back to us and we pay for the transportation and for the refining.
The swapping programme is such a dishonest way in which Nigeria is consistently losing on daily basis, millions of dollars. I think the people who have been operating in the industry, a lot of them have displayed lack of conscience and patriotism, and only God knows the amount of damage their actions have inflicted on Nigeria.”
