NNPC, marketers under fire over N10tr subsidy fraud

The Senate has invited officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), independent marketers, license inspection agency and the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) over the alleged N10trillion fuel subsidy fraud.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) Senator Kabiru Marafa who stated this in press statement said out of the N10trillion, NNPC is to account for N5.2trillion it collected as fuel subsidy between 2006 and 2016.

He said during the period under investigation, NNPC imported more than 40% of local consumption apart from gross under utilization of 445, 000 barrels for local refining annually.

“NNPC being the custodian of Crude oil resources of the nation, is responsible for 51% of petroleum products importation over the years aside the 445,000 crude allocations it gives itself on yearly basis for local refining.

“Available records show that it has spent 51% on subsidy for petroleum products importation aside the N3.8trillion spent on similar subsidy for independent marketers and about $1.5billion yet to be accounted for by other key players in the industry”, he said.

Marafa, also said “This committee has established the missing of 100million litres of PMS from such storage arrangement. We expected NNPC to have taken action against the two companies that carried out the theft but since it has not, we hereby ordered it to do so immediately, precisely within this week failure of which we shall make the whole details known to the public.”

Those to appear before the committee are “past and present chief executives of NNPC, their counterparts from the independent marketers, license inspection agency, NPA, FIRS, Customs and NIMASA”.