The immediate past Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, in January called for a forensic audit of the company, The Authority checks revealed.
The media, in January, was awash with how Kyari, who appeared before the National Assembly
joint committee on Finance, told the federal lawmakers how NNPCL remitted N10 trillion into the federation account.
He further told the joint committee how, under his leadership, the oil company, which had for several years resisted The Nigerian oil industry had for long resisted reforms, welcomed the auditing of its accounts.
“Until October 1, 2024, NNPCL, as mandated by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), acted as the supplier of last resort for fuel supply,” he told the lawmakers, stressing, ” a forensic audit is needed to determine the financial obligations of NNPCL and any owed entities.”
He added, “Our transactional accounts are transparent and published annually, reinforcing our status as the top taxpayer and the highest contributor of royalties and dividends.”
Kyari narrated how he encouraged performance transparency, and published financial statements of the national oil company.
Interestingly, protesters under the aegis of Concerned Citizens Against Corruption, on Wednesday swarmed the office of the Attorney General of the Federation in Abuja, demanding the probe of NNPCL’s books under Kyari’s watch.
Leaders of the group accused the former NNPCL GCEO of mismanaging funds earmarked for the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s moribund refineries and raised concerns about alleged indebtedness to oil trading companies.
The demonstration came a few weeks after President Bola Tinubu appointed
Bashir Ojulari to replace Kyari as NNPCL GCEO. The president also dissolved the NNPCL board.
Several key players in the oil industry expressed surprised at the protests, which some said they believed were sponsored by certain interest groups in the oil industry they felt were hurt by Kyari’s policies while in office.
The same sentiment was expressed by a former senator from Kaduna State, Shehu Sani. In a post of his verified “X” handle on Wednesday, Sani said he chanced on some persons at the AGF’s office. He noted that many of the protesters he engaged said they were hired to do so by persons ge said were “disgruntled oil interests.”
Several other players in the industry told The Authority that the protests may have been orchestrated by the “disgruntled oil interests to de-market Nigeria’s oil refineries to prepare the ground to buy them in the near future for peanuts.”
Under Kyari’s leadership, they recalled the NNPCL became the only Nigerian company to publish 100 per cent of its financial statements annually.
“The company consistently emerged as the highest taxpayer in the country. These were symbolic of the transparency campaign spearheaded by Kyari shortly after he took over the company’s leadership in 2019,” noted a major player in the industry.
“Let’s not forget that Kyari launched Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence (TAPE) to reform the oil giant long plagued by inefficiency. Under TAPE, Kyari introduced the Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR), which became a regular and public feature, and offered the Nigerian public and the international community unprecedented insights into the activities and performance of the national oil company,” he added.
Noted another expert, ‘In 2020, for the first time in its history, the NNPCL declared a net profit of N287bn. That performance improved significantly in the following years, with a record profit of N674.1 billion reported in 2021. The achievement marked a turnaround for a company that had, for decades, been synonymous with losses and mismanagement.
“Kyari also played a key role in the transformation of NNPC into a limited liability company under the Petroleum Industry Act, passed in 2021. The PIA laid the legal groundwork for increased operational efficiency and investment inflows into the oil and gas sector, ” he remarked.
He pointed out what he said was the irony of Wednesday’s protests “given Kyari’s well-documented commitment to transparency and his calls for a forensic audit of the company.
“Under Kyari, NNPCL’s commitment to transparency earned commendations from international bodies, including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which recognised the company for its enhanced transparency and accountability standards.
“To combat oil theft and pipeline vandalism, Kyari also established the Central Coordination, Data Integration, and Activation Control Room to enhance surveillance of oil and gas assets in the Niger Delta,” he declared.