Groups Seeks Law On NNPC Accounts

A group of civil society organisations has called for the promulgation of a law to compel the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to publish its statement of accounts annually.

The forum which attracted participants from the petroleum and natural gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Publish what you pay and African Network Environmental and Economic Justice among others, stated in its recommendations that the operations of the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) and the Petroleum Products Pricing regulatory Agency (PPPRA) be scrapped to guarantee the effectiveness of the petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) currently being repackaged for National Assembly’s approval.

According to the group, the operations of PEF and the PPPRA are inimical to the spirit of PIB, pointing out that the PEF has been utilised to subsidise the transportation of petroleum products primarily to the non coastal areas of Nigeria which it said, has generally proven ineffective with petroleum products’ prices in large parts of Nigeria not reflecting the regulated uniform price.

For the PIB to be effective when implemented, the group recommended the elimination of the downstream allocation process and disbandment of the PPPRA, concluding that the sector’s problems would persist as long as government continued to regulate supply and distribution.

A document released by the organisations also called for the inclusion of provision for yearly full disclosure of NNPC’s revenue profile, saying that such step would be key towards commercialization, pointing out that past drafts of the PIB were silent or weak on this issue, except, for instance, by opening yearly reports only to the President and National Assembly (SB139 (1).

Two drafts called for audits by an independent, competent, experienced and qualified auditor but stopped short of requiring NNPC to publish the audits.

On institutional reform, the group recommended the empowerment of the inspectorate to be a single, independent regulator for upstream midstream and downstream, and noted that none of the three PIBs in circulation provided for the creation of multiple agencies to regulate each sub-sector in the downstream, for instance creating overlapping mandates for the Inspectorate, Directorate and PPPRA.