Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, the former minister of education, has demanded an impartial audit of the transactions between the Dangote Refinery and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
The call came after Aliko Dangote, the owner and chief executive officer of the Dangote Group, disclosed last week that NNPC had limited its ownership stake in the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to 7.2 percent, rather than the previously reported 20 percent.
We actually had a 20 percent deal with NNPC, and they didn't pay the remaining amount until last year. We then gave them another extension through June 2024, during which they promised to stay in their current location.
In
response to these controversies, Ezekwesili, through her X (formerly Twitter)
handle, said she had previously decided not to speak on the Dangote
refinery-NNPC saga. "However, as more and more information filtered out
from both parties, we can reasonably conclude that something seriously murky
has gone on and needs to be fully unraveled for public accountability. And
urgently, too. "How can a project that by all definition attained the
stature of a 'national interest project' be marred in this depth of
embarrassing controversy that is playing out in the full glare of public
scrutiny of the regional and global investment community?
She questioned, "Did the Nigerian government not tell us that it borrowed
$3.3 billion from Afriexim-Bank to take a stake in the Dangote refinery?"
The former minister of education recalls telling the NNPC that it could not
function as a federation alone while it was under the government of former
President Olusegun Obasanjo.
"I frequently reminded the NNPC leadership throughout our time in office
that, despite their belief that they are "the goose that lays the golden
egg," they cannot continue to operate as though there is a "Federal
Republic of the NNPC."
"We took great pleasure in designing the multi-stakeholder Nigeria
Extractive Industries Transparency International in the early 2000s, which I
pioneered as Chairperson, because of the NNPC's opacity."
"By
enshrining ours in an Act that established NEITI as the transparency regulator
of the oil and minerals sector, we went above global minimum voluntary
standards of transparency requirements," the spokesperson said.
"We
call To immediately use the instrumentality of NEITI to launch an independent
audit of the Dangote refinery-NNPC transaction to offer the public the true
state of play," she urged President Bola Tinubu to do.
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