NNPCL: Allegations, Accountability and Political Contests

By Sanusi Muhammad

Penultimate week the Senate Committee on Public Accounts blew open a monumental scandal in the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) of over N210trillion, Nigerians and the global community were shocked.

The Committee invited three of the principal actors for questioning. NNPCL from veritable reports had transformed under Mele Kyari to an investigation brewing ground where off-springs of the most wretched on planet earth on its employment list allegedly feasted corruptly on the nation’s cake.

Nigerians are grateful to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for acting fast to rescue the Corporation from further scandals by the stationed and officials under investigation

The timely sack of individuals accused of financial misconduct with some on allegedly weekly visits to the EFCC to deposit part of what they stole is not enough.

What they deserve is the full weight of the law. In the absence of proper accountability, some of them are now shamelessly parading themselves as political actors while allegedly in possession of funds whose legitimate sources remain questionable. A typical case of easy come, easy go.

One of those invited for questioning by the Senate Committee was Bala Wunti, a Bauchi-born technocrat, who on April 2, 2026, arrived in the ancient city of Bauchi to formally signal his 2027 gubernatorial ambition before a gathering of supporters, political associates, and residents.

In his address to his hired listeners, Bala said: “I am an indigene of Bauchi, born at Wunti and my umbilical cord buried at Wunti. I grew up at Malam Goje in the house of Babiye within Bauchi metropolis. I am neither from Cameroun nor a refugee in Bauchi State. God has buttered my bread. I am comfortable and I lack nothing. If they give you rice, receive it etc.

That statement sounded out of frustration or fear of other contestants in the race. As a political novice, Bala was least expected to have sounded frustrated and desperate. His claim of being an indigene of Bauchi wasn’t under any doubt for such a testimony.

He was expected to roll out his blue-print and market his aspiration for prospective buyers. He proved to be a coward for refusing to mention names of those from his claimed Cameroun and the IDPs in Bauchi.

Although he had his target for the attack but why as a new breed politician, did he ignore telling his audience his historical ancestral background and point of origin? Claiming Wunti or Malam Goje as his place of birth and growth are not enough reason to make him an indigene of the Bauchi he claims.

Anyway, that may be a topic for subsequent discourse since that is the brand of bigotry and politicking Bala has introduced into Bauchi State political space.

According to an explorer, Christopher Columbus, until you summon the courage to lose sight of the shore, you can never cross the Ocean. That was one of the nuggets of leadership from the Italian explorer whose navigations across the Atlantic Ocean paved the path for Europe’s colonization of the Americas.

Unlike the Mele Kyari led brand of management in the NNPCL, Bashir Ojulari, the new man at the helm of NNPCL affairs, showed courage when he boldly informed Nigerians on February 24, 2026 that the nation’s refineries in Kaduna and Port Harcourt had been shut down.

His reason was clear, honest and simple: “They were operating at a “monumental loss” hence the need to halt the losses to prevent value erosion. Something like cutting losses. It obviously took titanic courage to do that. And even much more, a heavy dose of pragmation and patriotism.

How could anyone shut sown refineries that had been packaged and primed as working under Mele Kyari? How could you shutdown a project that had consumed billions of dollars to execute? How could you be so frank in a clan where speaking the truth is anathema?

Ojulari simply lost sight of the Mele Kyari shore and boldly crossed the Ocean. It takes courageous leadership to ignore the shore and its temptations, even treachery, just so you could conquer the Oceans and. Ojulari did. And for that, he deserves oysters served on a diamond-plated salver. What he achieved by that singular show of audacity to state the truth against an institutionalized corrupt system was to send a strong signal to Nigerians and some elements in the NNPCL ecosystem that the old order of stealing and corruption are gone with those who supported it to thrive.

The refineries for decades have remained convenient conduit to steal public funds and dupe the country. Epileptic and unpredictable like the national grid, they have gulped billions of dollars from the nation’s purse with tangible results.

Report shows that humongous amounts of between $18-$25billion was squandered on fictitious turnaround maintenance (TAM) and rehabilitation of Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries in the last 25 years. Yet, they keep huffing and cranking up with glitches instead of cracking crude oil for the benefit of Nigerians.

In 2021, for instance, the Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Executive Council approved a whopping $1.5billion for the Port Harcourt refinery and an additional $1.48billion for the Warri and Kaduna refineries. Yet, they remained under-performing infrastructure in the petrochemical-processing ecosystem. Every TAM was fraught with fraud. In some cases, contracts were awarded to companies and persons with zero technical competence and capacity.

Even when they were revived or turned-around, they remained under-performing facilities, sometimes performing facilities, sometimes performing less than 30%. Idle or under-utilized, they rack up operational expenses for NNPCL and for Nigerians.

Yet, NNPCL is not a charity organization. Neither were, the refineries built to exist only as national monuments exemplifying rot and perfidy as Kyari and his gang wanted them to be. Mele Kyari inherited them as built facilities to refine crude oil, and to serve the needs of the country. Committing billions of dollars on refineries that produce virtually nothing isn’t a smart thinking. Whereas previous managements may have slipped into the silent acquiescence syndrome of saying or doing nothing even when the ship was sinking, Ojulari dared the odds and raised his voice. He told Nigerians the inconvenient truth. The refineries are not working. They no longer serve the purpose they were established for. They have become technical dinosaurs in dire need of modernity and rebooting.

It takes courage and sincerity to report to the owners of a business that all the optics of profitability and productivity they had been fed with through the years were delusory, more like optical illusions in physics. They refineries were the cash cows of the thieves in NNPCL.

Making Nigerians to believe that all was well with the refineries is not smart leadership but thieving leadership. It’s primitive and crude, and conflicts with basic rudiments of successful enterprise management. It breeds a culture of losses untold, unspoken. The silence keeps the optics brighter and kaleidoscopic. It gives a veneer of sound fiscal health to the ledger when in reality, the holes are deeper than imagined. How do you explain, then, justify the running cost of a business, ramping up to over N12 trillion in two decades of poor productivity? Only a government spoon-fed entity can run on such low or zero oxygen and still stay ‘alive.’ Ojulari has bucked this trend of silent acquiescence. He slid into the whistleblower mode and has been blowing the whistle and clearing the rot these past one year.

But make no mistake about it; crude business is a lucrative business. It yields good profit, creates jobs and wealth. And because it is lucrative, it is also the hotbed of global corruption. Anywhere there is crude oil money there is a high probability of corruption.

Russia, Venezuela, Angola, etc all have their share of oil and gas corruption. The smell of oil is the stench of corruption. Transparency International, the global corruption watchdog, says: “Many countries rich in oil and gas are home to some of the world’s poorest people. How can this happen? Too often, wealth stays in the hands of politicians and industry insiders. Revenues don’t get published. Payments made to governments to exploit resources remain secret. Bribery and embezzlement go unchecked

“Many oil and gas companies protect the identities of their equity holders and subsidiaries. This allows corrupt leaders and players in the industry to hide stolen funds unnoticed. Inadequate financial statements make it easy to disguise corrupt deals, and impossible for any of us to monitor them. Many oil and gas companies don’t publish information country by country. This allows them hide the royalty, taxes and fees they pay. But without this information, we can’t hold and internal kleptomaniacs to account for the money received.

”That sums it up. There is a culture of lack of transparency in the global oil and gas industry. This paves the path for corruption to fester. Nigeria is no exception. Ojulari, coming on the back of a trove of accomplishments since April 2025, has turned the switch. He has transitioned NNPCL to the Transparency Frequency Mode unlike what he inherited. He has stanched the financial hemorrhage and cut losses reasonably by shutting the mal-functional refineries. He has reset the work ethic.

Corporations do not fail for lack of strategy. Richard Raynor, a Deloitte Research Fellow and author of the best-selling The Strategy Paradox argued that businesses can commit to success but end up failing. The former management of NNPCL that squandered over N5billion on mere change of name may have set out to succeed and give the oil and gas behemoth a new lease of life, but they woefully failed to do one critical thing: Self Audit! They failed to control their itchy-fingers and lust of ill-gotten wealth! They feared reconnecting with their former lifestyle! They failed to ask the question: What if the NNPCL were my family business, should it be run like this with all the holes and leakages we created to steal? Ojulari must have asked himself that question. And he was properly guided by family and friends.

He ignored the treachery of the shore to sail across the ocean. By such raw and courageous boldness, he has attracted admirers and enemies to himself within and without. But that’s a good price to pay for daring to be honest and sincere for the good of Nigeria and Nigerians.

Those implicated are now afraid of their own shadows. The slightest knock at their doors, they hide, thinking it must be one of the anti-corruption agencies on unscheduled visit.

Muhammad is a commentator on national issues

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Metoric Post.