Fuel theft: NNPC should go beyond sack of officials – Senate

The Senate has commended the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for responding to the
motion moved during a plenary session by Senator
Kabiru Marafa, chairman, Committee on Petroleum
Downstream Sector, on the theft of petroleum products
kept in the farm tanks of two oil companies and urged
the corporation to take more radical measures to avoid
recurrence.
Nnamdi-Ogbue
In a statement by its spokesman, Senator Aliyu Sabi
Abdullahi, the legislative chamber advised that NNPC
should go beyond the sacking and redeployment of a few
officials but 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.
“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.
“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”, Abdullahi stated.
It will be recalled that following the Senate debate of the
motion on the theft of the fuel, the NNPC sacked two
senior officials and redeployed a few others. Its
spokesman, Ndu Ughamadu said the sack and
deployment were in line with the on-going reforms the
corporation initiated to cleanse it of corruption.
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.
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.