State-run oil firm, the Nigerian
National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.) has appealed to the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to help tackle the menace of crude oil theft
in the country.
The Group Chief Executive Officer
of the company, Mr. Mele Kyari, made the appeal at an interactive session with
the EFCC’s helmsman, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, which held at the NNPC Towers in Abuja.
Chief Corporate Communications
Officer, Mr. Olufemi Soneye made this known in a press statement yesterday.
The statement noted that speaking
passionately about the efforts by NNPC Ltd to eradicate corruption from its
system and stem crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism, Kyari contended that
going by the volume of oil stolen daily and the brazenness with which the
perpetrators operate, crude oil theft was the most humongous and virulent
economic crime in Nigeria that must attract the attention of the EFCC.
“As we continue to do our best to
deepen transparency and stamp out corruption from the system, there is one big
challenge that you will need to help us with, Mr. Chairman. That challenge is
crude theft. It fits into everything you have said – the people, the asset, the
opportunity, and the absence of deterrence.
“We have deactivated 6,409
illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region. Today, we have disconnected up to
4,846 illegal pipes connected to our pipelines that is out of 5,543 such
illegal connection points. That means there are a vast number of such connections
that we have not removed.
“These things don’t just happen
from the blues. They happen in communities and locations we all know. As we
remove one illegal connection, another one comes up. It is sad, Mr. Chairman.”
“This kind of thing does not
happen anywhere else in the world. When we say illegal connections, they are
not invisible things; they are big pipes that require some level of expertise
to be installed. Some of them are of the same size as the trunk line itself. No
one would produce crude oil knowing fully well that it is not going to get to
the terminal. That is why nobody is putting money into the business. So, you
can’t grow production.”
“I believe, personally, that the
very purpose of your commission is to curtail economic crimes, and there is no
bigger economic crime of this scale anywhere else than what is happening in
this area," the GCEO lamented.
On corruption within the system,
Kyari explained that by law, NNPC Ltd is required to maintain high ethical
standards and has put in place structures and measures to curb discretionary
actions which fuel corruption, stressing that most processes in the company
have been fully automated to discourage arbitrary actions.
He disclosed that many issues of
corruption reported in the public were either not true or recycled from the
past.
In his presentation, the
Executive Chairman of EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede, expressed satisfaction with NNPC
Ltd.’s commitment to issues of ethics and code of conduct.
He, however, challenged
management to ensure that the codes of ethics and regulations are complemented
with monitoring and enforcement to enhance deterrence.
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