Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Muhammadu Buhari, has challenged the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to publish its accounts for the last five years to convince Nigerians that it was not maintaining double accounts.
Buhari particularly hit hard at the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation for saying that his (Buhari’s) position to the effect that NNPC maintains two accounts was “a beer parlour gossip”.
The APC presidential candidate, while speaking through one of the Directors of his Campaign Organization, Dr. Ibrahim Bello Dauda, made it pointedly clear that only the Ministry of Finance could contradict his position.
Buhari maintained that if the NNPC was sure that it does not maintain double accounts, it should publish its accounts for the last five years.
The Buhari Campaign Director made it clear that the APC presidential candidate was not used to making careless comments, stressing that he meant every word his said concerning NNPC accounts.
He made reference to the Senate investigation on JP Morgan.
It would be recalled that the Senate had, in the past, investigated an account operated by the NNPC, which caused disagreement between the organisation and the Central Bank of Nigeria.
In the said investigation. the NNPC had alleged that JP Morgan account (a domicile account) was operated by CBN on behalf of the Corporation.
Gen. Buhari had in his acceptance speech as APC presidential candidate, in proffering ways of addressing the issues of corruption in the country if elected, said: “On corruption, the government will enhance EFCC’s powers to investigate independently.
“Moreover, we intend to plug the holes in NNPC accounting. There will no longer be two sets of books, one for public consumption and another for insiders who profit from this slick fraud.
“In an APC government, the public will know how much NNPC makes and where all the money goes.
“No longer shall illegal flows of massive sums leave these shores to finance other economies.”
However, the NNPC management, in its reaction to the accusation of the General, described it as “political mischief” and “a beer parlour talk”.
The NNPC management said: “It is sad that General Buhari, one of the founding fathers of the NNPC, who himself has tasted of the virulent but false allegations, deliberately concocted to cast the Corporation and the public sector management of the nation’s oil and gas industry in bad light, would be the one to allege that NNPC runs two sets of account books ‘one for public consumption and another for insiders’.
“We consider General Buhari’s allegation in bad taste as it is nothing but a deliberate political mischief calculated to cast the Corporation in opprobrium all in a bid to shore up his political capital.
“We find it difficult to understand how a former Head of State who has also served as Minister of Petroleum Resources could believe that NNPC keeps two sets of account books to perpetrate fraud, knowing that NNPC is the most audited and scrutinized agency in the country.
“In the past one year alone, the Corporation has had its books scrutinized and audited by the Senate Committee on Finance and an external auditor, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC).
“Is it possible for the accounting discrepancies insinuated by General Buhari to escape the attention of such internationally acclaimed auditors?
“And in any case, why would an alleged fraudulent Corporation keep two sets of accounting books knowing that such could be used as evidence against it? “We hereby state emphatically that NNPC neither keeps two sets of account books nor is aware of the existence of such as the Corporation is run in line with international best practice.
“If General Buhari believes that such false information that are usually the subject of beer parlour gossip was true, would he rather that the Nigerian public believe that the allegation of missing $2.8 billion oil money against the NNPC under his watch as Minister of Petroleum was true?”
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