Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is sponsoring media publications against him for recommending the scrapping of the corporation.
He spoke when the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Hajiya Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, handed over the dossier on the sharp practices in the corporation to him at the Government House in Kaduna on Wednesday.
According to El-Rufai, NNPC has become a monster and too powerful, and he would continue to fight the corporation until it dies for Nigeria to survive.
“It is either Nigerians kill NNPC or NNPC kills Nigeria. Since I called for the death of NNPC, the corporation has been sponsoring articles to attack me. But, I am telling the NNPC that my skin is thicker than an elephant. NNPC can’t bribe us, I mean we, the four governors,” he assured.
El-Rufai is one of the four governors appointed by National Economic Council (NEC) to investigate the management of accounts of NNPC and the Excess Crude Account (ECA) by the past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.
The committee of four has the mandate to unravel the whereabouts of the N3.8trillion not remitted to the Federation Account by NNPC between year 2012 and May 2015 as well as the $2.1bn said to have been deducted from the ECA without proper authorisation by the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC).
In her presentation on the billions of dollars of oil revenue not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC, Hajiya Zainab said about 160million barrels of oil, valued at $13.7 billion were stolen between 2009 and 2012, adding that there was no proof that the $11.631billion subsidy payment captured from 2005-2012 was remitted into the Federation Account by the corporation.