Corruption In Oil Industry Exaggerated – Kachikwu
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe
Kachikwu, said corruption in the oil and gas industry was
Kachikwu said this in Abuja on Thursday at a news briefing
shortly after the launch of the new roadmap tagged “The 7
Big Wins”.
He said, “I think sometimes the corruption indices in
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation are overblown,
because sometimes people do not understand the
technicalities of what is going on and the short answer is
corruption.
“I do agree that there were all kinds of sleaze stories in the
past, but if you look at the last one year and in the last 13
months, those have dramatically disappeared.
“The TSA definitely helped, being able to suck in all our funds
in one pond, being able to look at long term focus.
“The fact that we have saved over a billion dollars through
the Direct Sale Direct Purchase programme, it is something.
Otherwise, it would have gone into private pockets.
“There are good people in the NNPC.”
Kachikwu said that in spite of doom stories that abound in
the country, the petroleum industry was one sector that had
said “there is hope, we can find solutions; we can solve
problems.
He said, “The only thing that we must hold high is
commitment and collegiality in trying to fix things. I believe if
the petroleum ministry works, the rest of the country will
work.”
On the issue of refineries, he said that the fact that they were
working today was because there were local engineers who
were able to resuscitate them.
He said, “The feeling of the Federal Executive Council and the
President is that we should first get the refineries to be
efficient before we talk about privatisation, otherwise, we will
be selling scraps.
“In their present state, nobody is going to offer you serious
money. A huge amount of investment is going into this.
“Secondly, there are union issues; we do not just take
decisions, not recognizing that people work there.
“If you privatise in a hurry and are sucked into union issues,
that closes the place and it does not function for years.”
The 7 Big Wins is a roadmap the petroleum ministry has
embarked on to focus on short and medium term priorities to
grow Nigeria’s oil and gas industry between 2015 and 2019.
The focus of the roadmap is Niger Delta and Security, Policy
and Regulation, Business Environment and Investment Drive
and Transparency and Efficiency.
It also includes Stakeholder Management and International
Coordination, Gas Revolution and Refineries and Local
Production Capacity.
NAN
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