|
Fraud Scandal: National Assembly/Neiti Should Probe Award Of Oil Blocks By Senior Fyneface
Nigerian Government’s transparency effort which is naively backed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and UK Government through the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), were supposed to be vital in eliminating corruption and instilling accountability in governance especially in management of earnings from the critical extractive industries mainly the oil and gas sector. However, in spite of the strong rhetoric from President Olusegun Obasanjo on his anti-graft campaign, transparency efforts especially in the critical petroleum sector have been grossly undermined. Each month that comes brings a new fraud scandal and every new scandal reveals stronger facts to buttress the point that what the President preaches is a direct opposite of what he is doing especially in the petroleum ministry and its major parastatal, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
In the Nigerian oil and gas circle, the Obasanjo-led administration would ever be remembered for two remarkable achievements. First as the government that pretended to fight corruption but successfully elevated fraud, corruption and shady dealings in the Petroleum Ministry to a working status that could be technical ranked as an upstream/downstream day-to-day business. Secondly, the government has beaten all the existing records as the only administration that has given away more lucrative oil blocks than the cumulative number of acreages given out by all the governments that rule the country since independence.
How else can anybody reward the current management of the critical sector if not to recommend the administrators for an international award in turning the petroleum ministry and its major parastatal into world’s number one arena of fraud, corruption, blurred transactions and undue government interference? Remarkably, acreage administration under the Obasanjo-led Government, are ceded to technically unknown players in the oil arena majority of which are politicians of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and their trading business cronies such as the all-sector –interest Transcorp. This is another innovation.
Just as the Ministry of Petroleum is yet to clear the plethora of fraud allegations that have beclouded its activities, revelations of huge fraud in the Ministry has become a monthly ritual. Ranging from missing bid proceeds right from 2000 to May 2006, through unclear accounting of proceeds from crude oil sales to reckless allocation of lucrative oil acreages to politicians whose only idea of oil business is their link to the Presidency, it has been one fresh case after another in an administration that prides itself in its anti-corruption campaign.
Now Nigerians are being told that an oil acreage that was offered in open auction but withdrawn for reasons best known to the DPR, NNPC and President Obasanjo the sole administrator of the Ministry and its parastatals since 1999, has clandestinely been sold off behind closed doors.
How can a lucrative oil block be sold off without being declared by the Ministry of Petroleum despite open bidding procedures designed and installed by President Obasanjo to bring a measure of credibility to Nigerian oil license awards? This concern becomes even more serious as the Petroleum Ministry prepares to empty the remaining 50 blocks in another mock bid round planned to take place before the end of this year.
The latest fraud scandal involves Addax Petroleum, a Swiss-based Canadian listed company that has a strong interest in Nigeria. The company has announced that it had agreed to pay $90m to take control of an oil block that had been left untouched in an open auction in May this year.
Addax said in its statement that it had agreed to acquire all the interests in the block from Starcrest, an unknown company not even in the petrol station business. The questions are: Who in the first instance awarded the oil block to Starcrest? Who owns Starcrest and how was the oil block awarded to the company which has no iota of track record in the oil industry?
This voodoo oil company, Starcrest mysteriously took initial control of the acreage with a promise to pay the government a $55m signature fee, but rather than raise the money as promised, it sold the lucrative block to Addax at a whopping $90 million making a clear profit of $35 million for doing nothing at all except being politically connected directly to the Presidency.
Truth be told, oil blocks that receive no bid in open auctions are normally reserved for future bid rounds, a policy not applied when Starcrest privately negotiated control of the block after the closure of the 2006 bidding in May. Another question here: Who negotiated the award of the acreage to the unknown company- DPR, NNPC, or President Obasanjo as the sole administrator of the Petroleum Ministry? The answer to this question will help unmask the masquerade behind all the alleged fraud and corruption in NNPC and the Petroleum Ministry as a whole.
President Obasanjo in early 2005 in what was a commendable initiative as at then introduced an open bidding process for award of oil block. This was supposed to be an innovation to address the fraud and corruption-ridden discretionary awards approach adopted for leasing out oil blocks by military juntas that ruled the country in the past. But the introduction which was supposed to be a damage repairs or limitation mechanism has since its introduction created more rooms for massive fraud and abuse.
Keen watchers of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector have established that President Obasanjo as the sole administrator or rather Minister of Petroleum is yet to permit the publication of the comprehensive list of all the license awardees both in the 2005 and 2006 licensing rounds at least those done publicly not to talk of those done inside the bedroom.
This singular action alone raises serious questions about the willingness of the President to allow the searchlight of transparency and accountability to shine on the murky accounts of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and its leading parastatal, the NNPC.
Nigerians cannot afford to continue the present nonchalant attitude in matters that affect their sole existence as a people. How can a group of very few people share among themselves all the available oil acreage both in the offshore and swamp arena and the entire nation is looking as if it doesn’t matter? The National Assembly should step in to probe the allocation of oil blocks since 1999 with a view to unraveling the traders in the arena.
The probe has become imperative as fraud and corruption scandals in awards of oil blocks have become a recurring scene and a black spot in the present administration’s anti-corruption campaign. The controversial OPL 245 (Malabu), Gen Danjuma’s OPL 246, the two oil blocks grabbed by Transcorp under f-o-c arrangement, over 10 blocks allegedly given to some political financiers of the PDP and associates of the President are among the cases.
Also, the Extractive Industry Transparency International (EITI) should through their local affiliate embark on an independent investigation into the various processes that led to the series of awards of oil blocks by the present administration with a view to confirming who got what and how much was actually paid into the coffers of the Petroleum Ministry.
The independent findings of the National Assembly and NEITI will help assess the transparent nature of the transactions in the Petroleum sector since between 1999 and 2006 especially in the award of oil blocks and receipt from crude oil sales. In addition, EITI and maybe the National Assembly should as a service to the Nigerian people, insist on the publication of the audit report by the British accountancy firm, Hart Nurse and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
Truth to be told, the President since May 2006 has continued to block the presentation of the report of the investigations into the missing $232 million paid by the multinational oil companies to the Nigerian Government between 1999 and 2004 but was not reflected in the records of the Central Bank of Nigeria. How long can Nigerians look the other way while just a few rehabilitated opportunists wreck the entire resources that belong to all of us? The time to demand for explanation is now when elections are around the corner.
SENIOR FYNEFACE, ELELEWON STREET, GRAII PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE
|