NAPIMS accused of complicity in illegal ExxonMobil contract award to Delta Afrik

Houston, Texas -- The National Petroleum Investment Management Services, NAPIMS, has been fingered in the shady multi-billion dollar contracting scheme at the ExxonMobil subsidiary - Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, subsidiar y is alleged to be deeply involved in the award and rollover of a contract under less than transparent circumstances to Delta Afrik Engineering Limited in the last 12 years.

It was gathered that Delta Afrik Engineering Limited snagged an EPCM - Engineering, Procurement, Contracting, and Management contract with Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited in 2007 at a cost of $1 billion.

"Since then (2007), that's in the last 12 years, the contract has been rolled-over repeatedly in favour of Delta Afrik Engineering without recourse to any invitation to tender for competitive bids. The contract has a current value of $5 billion," an industry operator, who pleaded anonymity, volunteered.

"The National Petroleum Investment Management Services is complicit in this whole saga because it is their duty to call for tender but they don't ever do this and the question is why?"

"When the Group General Manager of NAPIMS ask the IOC (international oil company) to bend the rules to accommodate his wishes, they do and in return, he grants them approvals for all manner of requests. Basically, NAPIMS has become Nigeria's biggest tollgate of corruption," the source added.

Further decrying the state of affairs at NAPIMS, the source said: "This is a place where a