Former President of the Trade Union Congress, TUC, Comrade Peter Esele, weekend accused the executive and the legislative arm of government of culpability in the unwholesome practices witnessed in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, stating that both arms of government partook and played a significant role in the rot in the corporation.
Speaking in an interview in Abuja, Esele also warned the incoming administration to focus on tackling corruption in the NNPC in its first few days in office or risk being sucked into the mess within three months.
Esele, who was also former President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), disclosed that the agents of government designed to check the excesses of the NNPC have over the years failed to carry out their duties but have instead hobnobbed with the NNPC, getting subsumed in the rot in the process.
According to him, the corruption and whatever has been happening in the NNPC was done with the connivance of both the executive and the legislature.
He said, “All of these abuses that are perpetrated inside the NNPC are nothing new. If you have been reading all NEITI reports, they have also alluded to the fact that the financial system in the NNPC is opaque.
“When you are talking about all of these, I will ask you, where are the oversight functions? The minister is supposed to do his or own, which is the executive; then you also have in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, a committee that is supposed to oversee what is going on in the NNPC.
“When you talk about the whole scale of the NNPC being corrupt, you have to look deeper. The NNPC became an octopus because every other agent of the state that was suppose to oversee what is happening in NNPC are also part and parcel of what is going on inside the NNPC.
“That is why from 1999 till date, NNPC gets away with anything, because all of those, whether in the national assembly, whether in the executive or the legislatures, they are all part of the looting inside the NNPC.”
Esele advised the incoming administration to immediately lay down plans on how they intend to restructure and reform the NNPC, stating that any attempt to delay in this regard might spell doom for the incoming administration.
He said, “The incoming administration must have to decide what they want to do with the NNPC before they get there. If they dilly dally, I can assure you that after three months, they will be part of the problems, because NNPC is big and financially strong to take care and handle anything.
“If the incoming government — and I am saying it — if they do not do something about the NNPC within the first 100 days, if they do not have a plan for the NNPC, they too will also be sucked into it.”
Esele called for a reform of the NNPC, such as removing the Minister of Petroleum from the Board of the Corporation; halting the incessant removal of the Group Managing Director of the NNPC and entrenching transparency among others.
“Another thing, no matter how little it is, is that the office of the minister of petroleum is inside the NNPC towers. That in itself is also very wrong. It is like telling me that the office of the president will now be domiciled in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No. The Ministry Of Petroleum has to leave the NNPC towers and the minister must know that his or her role is to oversee what is going on inside the NNPC, not to be part of what is going on in the NNPC.
“What has been happening is that the minister is part of what has been going on inside the NNPC, so the executive cannot say they not know what is happening there,” he noted.
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