Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, yesterday said oil thieves were after his life.

He said the discovery of about 295 illegal connections to oil pipelines has resulted in death threats to him.

Kyari was silent on who made the threats and said nothing about reporting the matter to security agencies.

He dismissed the threats as a non-issue because “every human being will die someday”.

Kyari said NNPCL destroyed thousands of illegal refineries in the last few months.

A connection to the main pipeline carrying crude to the terminal for export was also discovered, he added.

Kyari said the battle against oil thieves was yielding results as daily production has risen to about 1.4million barrels per day.

Also yesterday, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, said the anti-graft agency was investigating the crude oil theft.

Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC) Chairman, Prof Bolaji Owasanoye (SAN), said Nigeria was losing about 60 per cent of its revenue to bad agreements.

The trio spoke at a one-day Legislative Transparency and Accountability Summit organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Anti-Corruption.

Kyari, however, said not all the 700,000 barrels of crude lost daily was stolen.

According to him, some oil companies sometimes refuse to pump crude into the export line when they discover that such crude does not get to the export terminal.

He said NNPCL engaged private security firms to police the pipelines in collaboration with other security agencies.

“We didn’t know that this (oil theft) was happening. The scale is enormous, Kyari said.


“We have seen pipelines taken from our main trunk lines to abandoned platforms. We have thousands of illegal refineries that we have taken down in the past few months.

“We have seen over 295 illegal connections to our pipelines. Many of them have been there for years.

“You have a situation where your production came down to 1.1 million barrels from 1.8 million, but the truth is that not all of them are stolen. Let me clear the misconception that the remaining balance is stolen.

“Companies will stop injecting oil into the pipeline the moment they discover it can’t get to the terminal.

“Therefore, at the peak of production, you lose over 200,000 barrels per day.

“But once companies discover that their products won’t get to the terminal, they will terminate it.”

The NPPCL GMD said the company has restored two of its trunk lines, following the discoveries.

“We were left with no choice but to involve private security contractors and it worked. They are complementing our security agencies and they have done great work.

“I have received several death threats to myself. This is the cost of change.

“When people walk away from things they are used to, to something new, something that will take away value and benefit from them, they will react.

“That reaction is beneficial to us for all of us that will work together to make sure that this works,” he said.

Kyari, who said NNPCL was open to an audit, blamed the lack of remittances to the Federation Account on the subsidy regime.

“We are inviting it (an audit) so that Nigerians will know what we are doing.

“It’s not possible for you to buy fuel at N165 when your actual cost is far from the value.

“We need to understand what this subsidy means. When PMS (Premium Motor Spirit) comes into this country, we transfer to the marketers at N113 for us to realise N165 at the port.

“That means whatever is the cost, anything after that value is a subsidy. So someone has to pay for it. Every difference between 113 and that value is the subsidy.

“Some developed countries are taking out taxes on PMS. That’s another name for subsidy. No matter how they try to put it, it’s a subsidy.

“Countries are doing something to bring down the cost of energy.

“These common conversations you’re seeing in the media that NNPCL has not gone to FAAC (Federation Account Allocation Committee) since January are a misplaced expectation because our value should go to the tax authority.

“Therefore, Nigerians must get used to seeing NNPCL off those transactions; we are not able to meet our fiscal obligation of tax reality because of the subsidy regime,” the NNPCL GMD said.

Kyari believes a government-owned company can make a profit.

He said: In 2018, we made a loss of N803 billion. We reduced the losses to N1.3 billion in 2019.

“By 2020, we made a net profit of N207 billion and by 2021, we made a net profit of N687 billion. So, it’s possible to make a profit.

“But is that the capacity of a company that has assets worth over $600 billion? No, because people who have less capacity are making stupendous profits.

“You can’t do that until you change the system and the trajectory, but we can do better than we are doing today.”

Owasanoye decries illicit financial flows

Prof Owasanoye said the oil and gas sector accounts for about 92.9 per cent of illicit financial flows (IFFs).

According to him, there are indications that Nigeria accounts for the highest IFFs in Africa from the extractive sector.

He said: “To effectively and significantly reduce the menace of IFFs from Nigeria, we must focus on the extractive industry, especially the oil and gas sector.

“I will suggest that privatisation of NNPC does not eliminate extractive industry transparency standards of – ‘publish what you pay’—oil, gas, and mining companies disclosing the revenue payments they make to NNPC and stakeholders, including legislature and Civil Society Organisations; ‘publish what you earn’—government disclosing the revenues received from extractive companies; and – ‘publish what you spend’—government publishing full budget expenditures.”

The ICPC chairman believes that aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals was costing Nigeria a huge chunk in IFFs, which must be addressed.

He said: “Some multinational companies falsify trade records, fuel transfer pricing, inflate operational costs and retain on the payroll as expatriates staff who work remotely, but make huge emoluments claims for these, among other anomalous practices.

“The privatisation of NNPC does not protect it from being a victim of sharp business practices by trading partners.

“NNPC and Nigeria, therefore, remain vulnerable to corruption of the process, illegal exploitation of natural resource and course tax evasion.”

Owosanye lamented that several agreements negotiated and signed by the country have not been well coordinated.

We must not be left behind, says Speaker

House of Representatives Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila regretted that oil theft was taking a toll on the economy.

He said: “Due to theft and various acts of economic sabotage, we are experiencing a massive decline in crude oil production and export volume.

“Our country is the victim of bad actors determined to achieve great personal wealth at our collective expense.

“At a time of severe financial constraints, the perpetrators of this brazen heist threaten our ability to meet the demands of governance and nation-building.

“Their actions effectively amount to treason against our country, for which they must be held accountable.

“At the same time, we cannot be ignorant of global trends, and we cannot wish the facts away.

“The reality is that the best days of the fossil fuel industry are not ahead; they are long past.

“There is a coming, and some might say, ongoing shift in the global policy conversation about the economics and regulation of the oil and gas industry.

“We must be clear about how these changes affect us and what we need to do so that we are not left behind.”

Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, said available records revealed that between 1999 and 2020, Nigeria earned $741.74 billion from oil and gas alone and about N624 billion from the solid mineral sector.

He said the agency looked forward to its reports being laid at plenary in the National Assembly and debated.

“The National Assembly needs information on what is paid, what is received and what the money is used for, and NEITI has that data,” he said.

Orji said NEITI examines how much oil Nigeria produces in a given year, and what is received as revenue.

He urged the National Assembly to subject NEITI reports to debates, just as it does the Auditor General’s report.

“The two of them wear the same cap and the same nomenclature.”

Get bullet prove cars like Suleiman for all you family. Until you guys probe and name the criminals then we will agree and praise you.