N200 Trillion Unremitted Revenues: Cut New NNPCL Management Some Slack

By Bamidele Atoyebi

No serious nation jokes with its policy makers and revenue sources, so when the issue of Unremitted revenue from the country’s cash cow, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation broke the surface, there were hues and cries and correctly so.

However, some issues make the Senate Committee’s alarm worrisome. The issue wasn’t one of last month or just last year but has been there in both Auditor General’s report and that of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – NEITI reports, yet no whimper came from the senate or any other body. That was typical.

Then, in no distant past, a policy that would have opened the oil and gas sector to huge investments that would have ushered in life changing opportunities took years to be handled. Have we forgotten how long the Petroleum Industry Act stayed in the doldrums gathering dust while several fake versions were pushed out allegedly by the international Oil Companies, IOCs who used same Lawmakers to scuttle the development.

In the end, it was passed in phases of what experts have described as watered down and not as punchy and rewarding as the original aim of the legislation intended. By the time the Lawmakers woke up from their delirious influences, most investments in the sector had been snapped up by other countries and we lost.

The PIA experience is not new. A similar experience had played out in the health sector reforms by same Lawmakers which goes to confirm that their agenda focuses on their pockets and what they get for their families to continue living large while Nigeria bleeds.

The incontrovertible fact is that nationalism and patriotism have been replaced by personal aggrandisement where personal inerests have replaced collective interest.

On the NNPCL’s allegation of non remittance of revenues, it beggars belief that while it happened year on year, the Lawmakers never raised an eyebrow or raised the issue so coming after those on the saddle have left to raise it is absolutely suspicious.

Like a journalist once asked a politician in Calabar, “who is sponsoring this”. That innocuous question is known to have stopped the tour. So the pertinent question here is who is sponsoring our Lawmakers to shamelessly do the unthinkable?

A simple take on this is like asking a groom to account for the escapades of her bride while growing up with the full knowledge that they may have been at different places ignorant of what each of them did.

What has happened is that there is very strong suspicion that the Lawmakers in reverse reasoning are appropriating the general interest of Nigeria’s to be their personal interests, otherwise, what could have pushed them into such anomy?

The senate have a committee that oversights the NNPC and had been inviting them to their chambers, why didn’t they ever raise the issue with the people who were in charge during the said period only to find their voice with a team that is just three months old or is this a case of the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob? Where is it coming from?

It is a known fact that when the Ojulari team assumed office, they went professional by cleaning off the deadwood’s politicians foisted on the organisation through opaque recruitment processes as expected of them being the first set of people professionally suited for running the organisation. So could this be corruption fighting back?

Some are thinking aloud that those whose feeding bottles have been removed from their mouths by professionalising the place are behind the heckling and if one may ask,.what answers were they expecting from a team that has hardly gone to work?

If the committee has any question, Mele Kyari, the former MD of NNPCL is still alive and should be summoned to answer for them. It is hoped that this is not a case of a nursing mother on sighting who she feels she can beat in a fight will shop for who will hold her baby to enable her go into a fight. Why didn’t they raise the issues with the team that handled the transactions?

The failure of the lawmakers in overnighting NNPCL which led to the problem should be blamed and lack of patriotism on their part too should be condemned for their failure to act in the overall interest of the country. This crop of lawmakers that behaved this way are definitely not worthy of their seats.

Bamidele is the Convenor of the BAT Ideological group and a news publisher. He sent this message from Abuja.