Daily Independent Online.
*
Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
Gaius-Obaseki’s
sack linked to NNPC deals
•
Did not declare all income from refined oil
By Felix Ofou
Group Politics
Editor
Underhand dealings by
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) allegedly led to the removal
of its former Group Managing Director Jackson Gaius-Obaseki, according to an
angle to the story which has just emerged.
The latest disclosure
came from a member of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC),
Abu King Shuluwa.
Obaseki was sacked on
November 3 last year in controversial circumstances while abroad and was
replaced by Funsho Kupolokun, then Presidential Special Adviser on Petroleum.
Shuluwa told of how
the RMAFC tried unsuccessfully to compel Gaius-Obasaki to conform to laid-down
provisions. He said it took the persistence of the commission to convince
President Olusegun Obasanjo that the NNPC, under Gaius-Obaseki, was engaged in
underhand dealings.
According to Shuluwa,
among the dealings uncovered by the RMAFC was that the NNPC received 450,000
barrels of crude oil to refine daily, even when the refineries did not have the
capacity to do so. That created room for illegal practices.
Moreover, he added,
the NNPC sold the balance of the unrefined crude on the international market at
the market price of $32 per barrel, against the $18 it bought from the
government and diverted the excess revenue into the corporation’s
accounts in commercial banks.
“Our quarrel at
that time, which most people failed to see with us until later when the
President finally saw things our way and decided to remove Obaseki, was that
the NNPC was getting 450,000 barrels of crude to refine and sell domestically,
but it was not exactly doing that.
“It was getting
the crude at $18 per barrel even when the refineries in the country did not
have the capacity for refining 450,000 barrels a day”.
Shuluwa alleged that
not minding that the excess crude was sold at $32, Gaius-Obaseki declared only
the money accruable from oil sold at $18 and kept the balance in the
NNPC’s bank accounts, and concealed that the transaction was done at the
exchange rate of N130 to the dollar.
“Don’t
forget that they had no right to sell crude in the first place. So, all the
NNPC was paying to the government was the proceeds from 450,000 barrels sold at
$18. What about the difference?
“Similarly, the
NNPC determined the exchange rate at which it sold the crude. So, even though
the official rate was N130 to the dollar, the NNPC claimed that it sold the
crude at N110. We discovered that the excess not paid into the Federation
Account was over N300 billion”.
Gaius-Obaseki,
insisted Shuluwa, more or less operated parallel accounts, solely determined
what was spent, and paid only the balance into the Federation Account, “a
development that contravened the law establishing the NNPC”.
He added: “We
told them that they had no business opening a revenue account and that all the
money realised from the sale of the crude should be paid to the Central Bank.
Instead, the NNPC was simply putting the money into its own accounts,
determining its own expenditure and stating how much should go to the
Federation Account to be shared. And he paid the money in naira instead of
dollars in which the crude was sold”.
