Speaking at this year’s
Wole Soyinka Media Lecture series to mark the 81st birthday of Professor Wole
Soyinka, in Abuja, yesterday, el-Rufai also advocated privatisation of the
nation’s four refineries and the removal of fuel subsidy by the Buhari
administration.
Governor Nasir el-Rufai of
Kaduna State, yesterday, called for the scrapping of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, saying the corporation has over the years
constituted itself as a parallel government.
According to el-Rufai, with
the ‘death’ of NNPC, it would allow for the coming on board of a brand new
company that would be commercialised and capitalized, adding that the action
has become imperative against the back drop that NNPC has over the years
constituted itself as a parallel government, a country on its own, with Nigeria
another country different from the corporation.
He said the account of the
NNPC was last audited in 2005, and accused the NNPC of remitting only about 58
per cent of the money it earned between 2012 and the first half of 2015 to the
federation account.
His words: “The long and
short of the situation of our oil industry is best exemplified by the parallel
government called the NNPC. In 2012, it sold N2.77 trillion worth of ‘domestic’
crude oil but paid only N1.66 trillion to the Federation Account.
“In 2013, it earned N2.66
trillion but paid N1.56 trillion to FAAC; in 2014, N2.64 trillion but remitted
N1.44 trillion, while between January and May 2015, it earned N733.36 billion
and remitted only N473.2 billion.
“That means that the NNPC
only remitted about 58 per cent of the monies earned between 2012 and the first
half of 2015. A company with the audacity to retain 42 per cent of a country’s
money has become a veritable parallel republic.
“If we do not kill NNPC,
NNPC will kill Nigeria. Any organization that takes 50 per cent of federation
revenue for itself and gives you the change has no right to exist. It is evil,
it must die, it is just the manner of the death that we must talk about.”
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