The All Nigeria Peoples Party has described
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation as a ‘centre’ of corruption in the
country.
The party said this while reacting to the Nuhu
Ribadu-led Petroleum Revenues Task Force Committee’s report, which revealed
that Nigeria lost about N4.64tn over the last decade from cut-price deals
between multinational oil companies and government officials.
According to the task force, mandated to verify
all petroleum upstream and downstream revenues (taxes, royalties, etc) payable
to the Federal Government, NNPC gets an allocation of 445,000bpd of crude oil
to refine locally but it has been selling the product at cut-down prices.
The practice, the task force said, resulted in
the country losing $5bn between 2002 and 2011.
The ANPP in a statement on Sunday in Abuja by its
National Publicity Secretary, Chief Emma Eneukwu, said the Presidency had tried
to reduce the gravity of revelations by saying that because the Ribadu
Committee had not formally submitted its report to the appropriate authority,
the report in the public domain was suspicious.
The ANPP said, “However, we wish to ask whether
the report of a forged Export Clearance Permit of more than one and a half billion
dollar is also suspicious.
“Or the letter written by the Minister of Trade
and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, to President Goodluck Jonathan, promising
to investigate the source of the discovered fake document in his ministry and
brief the president accordingly (is also fake).
“On the other hand, we believe that the people
have a lot to fear from the government if 24 million barrels of crude oil can
afford to leave the shores of this nation under suspicious circumstances.
“We are also aware that coupled with the Reuters
report of the deep graft in the NNPC, what we are faced with is capable of
ridiculing us in the comity of nations.”
The ANPP therefore said instead of trying to
sweep the revelation under the carpet, the government should own up to what it
described as ‘the decade-old daylight robbery of the whole federation,’ and
apologise to Nigerians.
It also called for the prosecution of the
indicted officials, private individuals and multinationals which participated
in the rip-off.
The party appealed to the National Assembly to
look at the report in order to ascertain the true situation of things, and to
ensure that the “so-called committee set up to look into the Ribadu Committee’s
report does not cover up vital facts which will help to exorcise the demon of
corruption sucking the blood of this great nation with NNPC as the siphon.”
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