A storm of criticism has hit the Nigerian government after Transparency International Nigeria (TI) accused Tinubu and former presidents Muhammadu Buhari and Olusegun Obasanjo of enabling a culture of financial opacity within the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
The allegation follows the release of a Nigeria Development Update (NDU) by the World Bank, which disclosed that NNPCL generated N1.1 trillion in the final quarter of 2024 but transferred only N600 billion to the Federation Account, leaving N500 billion unaccounted for.
Speaking to Daily Post on Monday, Auwal Rafsanjani, TI Nigeria’s Country Director, blamed successive presidents and the National Assembly for failing to enforce transparency and accountability in the management of Nigeria’s oil revenues.
“The need to carry out a comprehensive audit of NNPCL is necessary to ascertain the level of financial transactions under Mele Kyari and other leadership of NNPCL. If we want to have a comprehensive audit to know all the missing money lost from 1999 to date, it is only a thorough audit that will ascertain this. It is not only Mele Kyari, but it has to be comprehensive.” Rafsanjani said.
He added, “All these happened under the president, who is the substantive petroleum minister. The president is responsible. Whether Buhari, Tinubu, or Obasanjo. That is why we have advocated for a substantive minister of petroleum.”
“They must stop appointing themselves as ministers of petroleum. This showed that the National Assembly is not carrying out its oversight function. So it is a shame. The indictment should be to the president and the National Assembly for the mess in NNPCL. The subsidy is not the problem, but the corruption in the process is. The missing money must be recovered and used for the good of all Nigerians.”
TI’s remarks have ignited fresh demands for an independent probe into NNPCL’s operations, with civil society groups like the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) reinforcing the call for financial transparency.
Also weighing in, energy analyst and managing partner of BBH Consulting, Barrister Ameh Madaki, criticized what he called the “deeply entrenched” opacity of the state-run oil company. “The probe required in NNPCL under Mele Kyari goes far beyond the N500 billion referred to in the World Bank report under reference,” Madaki said.
“The opaque nature of the operations of the NNPCL over the years and the selective amnesia of the Nigerian public ensure that massive fraud is covered up by the organization. For instance, what happened to the $3.3 billion borrowed by NNPCL to shore up the value of the naira on crude oil futures sales contracts? What was done with the money when the currency went into a disgraceful free fall? And this is not the first time NNPCL is not remitting funds to the federation account!”
Madaki further recalled how, under Buhari’s second term, NNPCL claimed it had become a limited liability company and refused to remit any revenue, citing a policy of transferring profits only after audits. “This kept the states and local governments in dire straits financially under that government, and nothing happened.”
“So why would anyone cry wolf over one month’s remittance to the Federation account? NNPCL has declared losses for several years under one frivolous guise or the other, but nobody has asked for a probe.”
He called on Bayo Ojulari, the newly appointed Group CEO of NNPCL, to clean house. “Bayo Ojulari, the new GCEO of NNPCL, as a square peg in a square hole, must do the needful and purge the organization of its opaqueness so that Nigerians can, for the first time, reap the benefits of having a National Oil and Gas Company.”
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