‘Ongoing Reforms in NNPC Anchored on NEITI Audit Reports’
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has described its yearly investigative reports on the activities of operators in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry as the dominant document with which the federal government is restructuring business and operational processes at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
NEITI affirmed recently in Abuja that the decision of the government to restructure the NNPC’s operational processes cannot be isolated from the various findings and recommendations in its yearly audit report of Nigeria’s hydrocarbon industry. Its immediate past Executive Secretary, Zainab Ahmed, who has been appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari into the federal cabinet as a minister, told reporters when she handed over at the agency that several recommendations NEITI had made on restructuring the NNPC but which were in the past ignored are what is being adopted by the new management of NNPC in the corporation’s ongoing restructuring.
Relationships between NEITI and NNPC had in the past been extremely frosty with NNPC often accusing NEITI of ill intents each time audit reports on its activities in the sector flagged off unwholesome practices by it. Ahmed however explained at the valedictory session that NEITI’s reports had provided the government with very useful tools on how to restructure NNPC’s activities in the oil sector. She said that issues such as NNPC’s domestic crude oil allocation, joint venture cash call arrangements, unbundling of the Pipeline Products and Marketing Company (PPMC) and the corporation’s participation in the petrol subsidy scheme have all been given priority reviews and recommendations in the reports it had published so far.
“Each of the audits conducted during my tenure disclosed facts and crucial information that formed the basis of our recommendations for remediation. Although implementation of the recommendations have been slow in the past, I am encouraged that the present administration has taken the implementation seriously,” Ahmed said.