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.