THE new leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has said that some persons within and outside its organisation are working against its transformative efforts towards corruption-free operations.
They raised the concern in a statement on Friday, June 27, stating that a coordinated sabotage campaign is being launched against its leadership.
“The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd.) has uncovered an emerging coordinated sabotage campaign being waged by a syndicate of known and faceless actors, both outside and within various levels of the organisation.
“This group is actively spreading lies and misinformation simply to discredit NNPC Ltd.’s leadership and derail the organisation’s ongoing transformation into a corruption-free, performance-driven energy company, in line with the mandate of His Excellency, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the management stated.
The ICIR reported that President Bola Tinubu had on April 2 removed the former Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of NNPCL, Mele Kyari, and his management team.
He said the decision was necessary to enhance the NNPCL operational efficiency, restore investor confidence, boost local content, and advance gas commercialisation and diversification.
He then appointed Bashir Ojulari as the new GCEO and Ahmadu Musa Kida as the non-executive chairman, overhauling the 11-man board and replacing them with new members.
In an ongoing probe on the NNPCL by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, the state-owned oil company’s audited financial statements between 2017 and 2023 revealed that about N210 trillion was unaccounted for.
This has led the committee to summon the leadership of the NNPCL to clarify the discrepancies in its records.
However, neither NNPCL’s officials nor its external auditors showed up for a panel session that was slated for yesterday, June 26, The ICIR reported.
In response, the Senate committee had demanded that the company’s top executives appear before the panel by July 10 or face constitutional sanctions.
In its statement on Friday, the new NNPCL management claimed that the tactics of the saboteurs include planting scandalous and fabricated reports, curated to distract leadership, mislead the public, and undermine the commitment of our dedicated workforce and reform-minded Nigerians.
They stressed that these calculated efforts by those who feel threatened by reform, transparency, accountability, and change are clear evidence of the lengths to which they will go to obstruct the transformation of Nigeria’s foremost energy institution.
“We expect a surge of defamatory content in the days and weeks ahead. NNPC Ltd. remains undeterred. The transformation is underway, and no amount of sabotage will stop it.
“We urge our dedicated staff, stakeholders, and all patriotic Nigerians to stay focused, ignore the noise, and not be discouraged. We remain on mission,” the management added.