‘Fuel theft’: Senate tells NNPC to go beyond sacking its officials

The senate has urged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to restructure its operations in a bid to ensure transparency.

Reacting to the retirement of some officials over the controversy surrounding missing 130 million litres of fuel, the legislative chamber advised the corporation to go beyond sacking of the officials indicted in the issue.

Last week, the oil firm announced that three officials had been retired in line with some reforms at the corporation.

In a statement by Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, its spokesman, the senate asked NNPC to do more.

“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”, he said.

“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.

“NNPC should 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.”

Abdullahi said 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,” he said.

“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.”