Sanusi Vs NNPC: If Only Ribadu’s Committee Report Was Not Messed- Up By Ifeanyi Izeze

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Those who know would agree that this country has more than enough good policies and intents scattered all over the place that could have comprehensively addressed most of the embarrassing situations that keep coming up every now and then. The issue however, is that the gulf between good policies/intents and their implementation in this country is so wide that it can conveniently accommodate our entire land space. And it is in this wide gap that all cases of criminal maladministration, corruption and misapplication of public funds are perpetrated with impunity.

When a serious need arose early last year on the urgent necessity to enhance probity and accountability in the activities of the managers of Nigeria’s oil earnings, a Petroleum Revenue Special Taskforce (PRSTF) was commissioned to address or rather harmonise issues arising from the various fiscal regimes existing in the oil sector.
Among other things, the taskforce was mandated to establish the streams of revenue flows from the Petroleum sector to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and processes of accountability of each agency or entity acting as a stream of income. The Task Force was empowered to establish if existing systems, laws, processes and functions across the value chain provided reasonable assurance that revenues from the Petroleum Industry are completely captured, recorded intact, and properly accounted for.
In the work of the taskforce, was it recommended that the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 be immediately amended to criminalize withholding payment of oil and gas revenues after due date and issuance of a demand notice?
Was it not said that there should be full compliance by NNPC with prevailing CBN exchange rates for remittance of crude oil proceeds and that the Federal Government should revisit the Domestic Crude Oil Business Model currently exploited by the nation’s apex oil concern?
The taskforce clearly asked the Federal Government to insist on single point accountability for oil and gas revenues to address the contentious issue of sale of equity crude oil.
If the Jonathan –led government has heeded to the suggestion on equity crude sales and dismantling of the domestic crude business model, would it not have been spared this everyday embarrassment where none of the sides CBN or NNPC can authouritatively say what we earned and where it is warehoused?
And just a mere Presidential Directive would have easily achieved this.
If the President Jonathan had ordered a stop to the continued use of oil traders by the NNPC as its system for selling crude, on grounds of value for money and probity, what would have happened? Nothing! Each time issues of accounting for oil proceeds come up, those we look up to give us authouritative figures always sing discordant tunes. Is it not a shame to this country!
If the President had insisted that NNPC and other agencies of government obtain crude oil production data for fiscal purposes at the flow stations where crude oil is stabilised rather than at the terminals as is currently the practice, would anybody have done anything to him? At least such ‘swagger’ or rather ‘gingar’ would have changed so many things, abi? Would that not have at least tangibly addressed the situation of conflicting production figures and loss to crude oil theft?
Whether the concerned interests want to hear this or not, the truth is that the alleged missing billions of dollars of revenue in unpaid debts from signature bonuses and royalties and crude oil sales may actually not be missing in real sense but rather stupidly forfeited by a policy of the Federal Government that was not only selfishly evil but outrightly driven by corrupt tendencies. Who were the Asian (Indian, Chinese and Korean companies and their Nigerian partners that benefitted in the Right-of-First-Refusal and Oil-for-Infrastructures 419 deals?  Why are we telling ourselves half-truths? In this country, it is time we learn to tell ourselves the whole truth because we all have equal stakes in the future and faith of this great nation.
Does it surprise anybody that over $22 billion earned in 10 years (2002-2012) by the NNPC could not be accounted for as reported in the findings of the Ribadu Committee which ofcourse lifted that wholesale from the NEITI 2010-2012 Audit Report? Understandably, the Ribadu Committee dodged the crucial explanation of why the money cannot be traced because this gross malfeasance and crime against the Nigerian people was instituted and directly supervised by Ribadu’s former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo while Nuhu himself presided over the nation’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Ribadu as the then EFCC boss was fully aware that his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was feasting on monies from the NNPC. Does NNPC print money? Was it not some of these monies we are talking about now as missing funds and why are we not calling them by names?
Throughout the eight-year rule of Obasanjo, and  the brief stay of Yar’adua at the villa,  the NNPC group managing directors reported directly to the President even to the point of collecting administrative running costs direct from the Presidency. Those who know would tell you that Gaius Obaseki, Funso Kupolokun and Yaradua as NNPC GMDs literally worked as personal aides of President Obasanjo and did not sign a single crucial NNPC document on their own without clearance from oga-at-the-top. Most of the current problems in the NNPC and even the wider oil sector were created by Dr Rilwanu Lukman’s mis -advices to Chief Obasanjo. This setting was inherited by the short-lived Yar’adua administration. And now Jonathan himself is not behaving better as he seemed to have even modified it to suit his “transformation agenda”.
Truth be told, the problem of corruption in the NNPC is systemic and no amount of National Assembly probe or opposition big grammar can change a single iota of the practice in the system. And the tragic side of this story is that almost all the people that genetically engineered and grossly benefitted from this systemic corruption and culture of blurred transactions in the NNPC have now crossed to form the core of those who are not only angry with Nigeria but even with themselves.
(IFEANYI IZEZE is an Abuja-based Consultant and can be reached on: [email protected]; 234-8033043009)

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