Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has demanded an independent audit to determine why the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited limited its investment in the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to 7.2% rather than the 20% that was originally envisaged.
This follows the NNPC’s denial of owning a blending plant outside Nigeria on Tuesday.
The comments came as a backdrop of the controversy surrounding the Dangote refinery.
Ezekwesili made this statement via her official X handle, stating she initially didn’t want to speak on the Dangote refinery-NNPC saga.
“However, as more and more information filtered out from both parties, we can reasonably conclude that something seriously murky has gone on and needs to be fully unravelled for public accountability. And urgently, too,” she stated.
She added, “How can a project that by all definition attained the stature of a ‘national interest project’ be marred in this depth of embarrassing controversy that is playing out in the full glare of the local and international investing community?
“Did the Nigerian government not tell us it borrowed $3.3bn from Afriexim-Bank to take a stake in the Dangote refinery?”
Ezekwesili recalled that during former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, she used to tell the NNPC that it could not continue to run as a federation on its own.
“When we were in government, I often told the NNPC leadership that they cannot carry on as though there is a ‘Federal Republic of the NNPC’ just because they think of themselves as ‘the goose that lays the golden egg’.
“The opacity of the NNPC was the reason we took great delight in designing the multi-stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency International in those early 2000s that I pioneered as Chairperson.
“We went above global minimum voluntary standards of transparency requirements by entrenching ours in an Act that established NEITI as the transparency regulator of the oil and minerals sector,” she explained.
She urged President Bola Tinubu “to immediately use the instrumentality of NEITI to launch an independent audit of the Dangote refinery-NNPC transaction to offer the public the true state of play.”
Recall Aliko Dangote recently disclosed that, contrary to rumors, NNPC’s investment in his refinery was only 7.2%, not 20%.
“The agreement was actually 20 per cent which we had with NNPC, and they did not pay the balance of the money up till last year; then we gave them another extension up till June (2024), and they said that they would remain where they have already paid, which is 7.2 per cent. So NNPC owns only 7.2 per cent, not 20 per cent.” Dangote stated.
NNPC confirmed this, saying it decided not to invest further in the refinery.
Meanwhile, the NNPC’s boss said on Tuesday that he does not own a blending plant outside Nigeria, in response to claims by Dangote that some officials of the national oil company own blending plants in Malta.
Kyari said he had been inundated with calls from family members and friends, asking if he truly owns a blending plant in Malta.
The NNPC boss emphatically said he does not own or operate any business directly or by proxy anywhere in the world, except for a local mini-agric venture.
Additionally, he stated that he is not aware of any NNPC employee that owns or runs a blending factory in Malta or any other country.
