The minister of state for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu has written President Muhammad Buhari over a massive multi-billion dollar scandal in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
According to Kachikwu, the Group Managing Director of the NNPC is making sensitive decisions that affect the nation’s economy unilaterally, without due process and with blatant disregard for the oversight mechanisms put into place by the governing documents of the NNPC.
The letter which was written by Kachikwu on August 30th was circulated widely on the internet yesterday. In the letter, Kachikwu informed the president that he would have intimated him of the untoward and illegal developments at the NNPC but was unable to do so after failing to secure an appointment to see the President severally.
In the letter, the junior minister for petroleum informed the President of the illegal award of several multi-billion dollar contracts, unilaterally awarded by the NNPC GMD, Maikanti Baru.
These include the Crude Term contracts, valued at over $10bn; the DSDP contracts, valued at over $5bn; the AKK pipeline contract, valued at about $3bn; various financing allocation funding contracts with the NOCs, valued at over $3bn; various NPDC production service contracts, valued at over $3bn to $4bn.
“The legal and procedural requirement is that all contracts above $20m would need to be reviewed and approved by the board of NNPC. Mr. President, in over one year of Mr Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the board.
‘‘As in many cases of things that happen in NNPC these days, I learn of transactions only through publications in the media,’’ Kachikwu wrote.
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