FG Summons NNPC GMD Over ₦3 Billion Slop Oil Sale

Jolted by two consecutive investigative stories by Pressinformant x-raying procurement irregularities and complicated corruption of due course of on the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Company (NNPC), the presidency this week summoned the Company’s Group Managing Director (GMD), Mele Kyari, to the Villa.

The GMD was summoned to elucidate how, beneath his watch, an intricate net was woven by high officers to dispose 30 million litres of slop oil in a fashion that violated the nation’s public procurement rules.

Within the wake of the shortcoming of Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri refineries to supply Low Pour Gasoline Oil (LPFO) because of a significant rehabilitation train slated to final 44 months, slop oil is the one various to LPFO, a product of fractional distillation used to energy boilers in manufacturing amenities, together with cement factories.

With out slop oil as a substitute, most manufacturing amenities within the nation could be shut down with the attendant layoff of hundreds of employees.

Consequently, out there slop oil in Nigeria is considered as a nationwide strategic inventory. It’s this inventory that cash-hungry NNPC officers contrived and bought off to export firms who will ship them to abroad finish customers.

NNPC’s motion outraged native stakeholders who thought-about the transaction as an affront on President Muhammadu Buhari’s coverage of supporting native manufacturing industries as a part of his put up COVID-19 financial restoration plan.

On Tuesday, Mele Kyari was on the presidential Villa in response to a summon by the President, these accustomed to the matter instructed PREMIUM TIMES.

In preparation for an inevitably troublesome grilling session, the NNPC GMD, our sources stated, shortly referred to as a gathering of all his Group Govt Administrators (GEDs) to marshal a defence. It was gathered that he went with a written defence.

PREMIUM TIMES had uncovered how the NNPC carried out a controversial bid that noticed scarce slop oil ending up within the palms of three most popular bidders, all of them within the export class.

Checks by this newspaper had additional revealed that the primary two bid-winning firms had been owned by the identical administrators.

Simply as Mele Kyari was dealing with uneasiness on his first questioning session, it emerged that the NNPC GED answerable for refineries, Mustapha Yakubu, and the Managing Director of Port Harcourt Refinery, Ahmed Dikko, remained apprehensive over what destiny may befall them. Mr Dikko is claimed to have masterminded the controversial bid.

Some NNPC officers, trade gamers stated, had wished to dispose the valuable slop oil by way of single-source procurement process so they might promote it off to cronies at rock-bottom value.

After they had been instructed single supply procurement wouldn’t fly within the face of procurement legal guidelines, they resorted to a beauty aggressive bid fraught with irregularities.

The bid final result turned much more embarrassing to trade watchers when none of the popular firms may pay for the product they gained.

When Signal Oil &Fuel Ltd couldn’t pay, the allocation went to the second bid winner, Synthesis Built-in Pure Oil whose bid was about N180 million lesser than that of Signal Oil.

Each Synthesis Oil and Signal Oil are owned by the identical administrators. Once more when Synthesis Oil couldn’t pay, the allocation was transferred to the third place winner Kurpo Power Ltd, whose bid was N180 million lesser than that of Synthesis Oil and N360 million lesser than that of the primary bid winner, Signal Oil.

The rationale for the creation of this convoluted route by NNPC officers is a part of the puzzles the presidency is attempting to unravel.

It’s stated that Mustapha Yakubu, the GED answerable for refineries, is having issue controlling Mr Dikko, a detailed ally of the GMD. To what extent Mr Kyari was in a position to management each Messrs Yakubu and Dikko within the saga is a matter of curiosity to the Presidency who’ve ordered the NNPC’s GMD to go and return subsequent week with the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva.

The NNPC persistently declined a number of requests by this newspaper to touch upon this matter.