The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria’s state owned oil company has been at the centre of controversy due to recurring accusations of corruption and poor accountability. Successive administrations have promised to end the rot in the agency, however that remains a pipe dream as what we have is the sustenance of the status quo of secrecy, non disclosure and corruption.

The current leadership of the NNPC under the management of Dr Maikanti Baru has promised to make the activities of the agency open to all Nigerians which is a departure from the existing status quo but it seems the agency has backtracked on the promise going by recent events.

Human right lawyer Femi Falana SAN recently made an Freedom Of Information (FOI) request to the group demanding the an external audit of the following “the revenue realised from the sale of the daily allocation of 445,000 barrels of crude oil from June 1, 2015 to December 31, 2017, the amount utilised as subsidy and the amount remitted to the federation account from revenue realised from the crude oil sales within the period, the quantity of crude oil refined locally and the amount spent on turn-around-maintenance of local refineries (with vouchers) within the period”.

However a confirmation that the NNPC is yet to change from its old ways came via a reply to Falana on the 1st of March 2018. Replying through Sarah Ndukwu its general manager, litigation, arbitration and property law department,  the NNPC replied, “Be informed that the FOIA is not applicable to NNPC because it is not a public institution within the meaning of section 31 of FOlA. The NNPC is neither a legislative, executive, judicial, administrative nor an advisory body of government (which the said section applies to); it is a statutory corporation established for the sole purpose of managing Nigeria’s commercial interest in oil and gas sector and conducting trade in that respect. Even if the FOIA applies to it, the information sought is “expressly excluded from the purview of the act by virtue of section 15(1)(a)-(c) thereof as the requested information is in the nature of “commercial, financial and trade secrets information, which obviously are either subject to non-disclosure agreements or whose disclosure could reasonably interfere with NNPC’s existing contractual obligations or harm third parties’ interests.”

The NNPC Statement has simply conveyed the fact that the agency is not ready to tow the path of accountability which is against the promise of its management to make the activities of the agency more open than before. The FOI request was an avenue for NNPC to reaffirm it’s commitment to accountability but it chose to do otherwise.

If they aren’t squirreling

tosin adesina