The turnaround maintenance scam

LAST week, the Senator Isa Jibrin-led Senate ad-hoc committee investigating the turnaround maintenance (TAM) for the country’s four government-owned oil refineries threatened to recommend the sack and possible jailing of the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, and heads of government agencies in the oil sector. The senator from Kogi East issued the threat during an interactive session with the NNPCL management and other oil sector executives. In our considered opinion, not only is Senator Jibrin’s threat warranted, the upper chamber should give it teeth by arresting and putting on trial those implicated in the totally untenable situation that made the frustrated senator issue the threat in the first place.

According to the Senate ad-hoc committee, despite the expenditure of over $592 million, €4.8 million, and £3.4 million reportedly spent on turnaround maintenance for the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna respectively from 2010 till date, none of them has been able to refine a drop of oil. On the contrary, and to the shame of the Nigerian political elite, and in an arrangement that has no precedent anywhere in the world, the country continues to export crude oil to refineries abroad, which it then pays to import back into the Nigerian market. If this is not the textbook definition of organized crime, we wonder what is.

To be sure, the latest move by the Senate is not unprecedented. In April this year, the Senate considered and adopted the report of its Committee on Public Accounts which probed the expenditure of government agencies using the 2016 audit report. According to that report, the NNPCL failed to account for oil delivery amounting to N102billion to the Warri and Kaduna refineries. The Senate had considered and adopted the report of its Committee on Public Accounts which probed the spendings of government agencies using the 2016 audit report. The report, presented by Senator Matthew Urhoghide, said: “From the review and examination of domestic crude oil lifting sales profile presented for audit verification, it was noted that several deliveries were stated to be jointly lifted by or delivered to WRPC and Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical Company without necessary details or breakdown of what was delivered to respective companies.” In March 2017, the Senate uncovered an alleged N10 trillion fraud by staff of the then NNPC, in connivance with officials of some independent marketers and other key players in the petroleum sector between 2006 and 2016. Besides, in January 2018, Dino Melaye, the senator representing Kogi West, raised the alarm over an alleged $137 million fraud in the corporation. He alleged that Brass NLG, a company in which the Federal Government had controlling shares, had an account domiciled in a Deposit Money Bank where hidden funds were kept, and that the account was not linked with a BVN Number.

While the Senator Jibrin-led committee ought to be commended, the fact that previous sessions of the same Senate apparently signed off on these large expenditures without demanding a proper accounting boggles the mind. For not only does the Senate have powers of appropriation, it also has mandate to exercise oversight on the use of any and all appropriated funds. Which raises the question: what did previous sessions of the Senate do to exercise such oversight, and where was it (the Senate) when the monumental waste now being pointed at was being perpetrated? And what would this new threat about a possible sacking and jailing amount to if, as we have reasons to expect, the bluff of the ad-hoc committee’s chairman is called?

It is far from trivial in this regard that some chief executive officers (CEOs) of a number of invited agencies failed to show up at the Red Chamber and only sent representatives. These include the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and their subsidiaries. It goes without saying that what is at stake here goes beyond the future of the country’s refineries, important as that is. Nor is it just about the refineries, whose sad fate is reminiscent of that of the stillborn Ajaokuta Steel Company. Instead, what is being exposed here is a culture of impunity whereby those entrusted with public money openly appropriate it for private ends without fear of any consequence.

If President Tinubu is serious about tackling corruption in the country, we couldn’t imagine a better place to start.

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