Damilola Shittu – Abuja
In his determination towards ensuring transparent transactions, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, on Tuesday said that the corporation would respond to calls for the disclosure of contracts and contractors later this month.
He noted that the biggest contracts in the corporation’s portfolio currently were the products supply contracts under the Direct Sales Direct Purchase scheme, adding that details of the contracts and the contractors would also be made public within this month.
Through the DSDP scheme, NNPC sells crude to international refiners and receives refined petroleum products in return.
The GMD, according to a statement from the corporation, disclosed this during a courtesy visit by the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Waziri Adio, to the NNPC headquarters in Abuja.
Kyari also stated that in keeping with its commitment to be accountable and transparent, the corporation would publish its audited accounts soon.
He further urged the public to be wary of attempts to drag the corporation into politics in the guise of requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act.
The NNPC boss noted that although the corporation was committed to transparency and accountability to the Nigerian people, a line must be drawn between genuine requests for information and malicious attempts to drag it into politics using the FOI law as a cover.
Kyari was quoted as saying, “As you are aware, sometimes the requests are brazenly malicious, and they are laden with political undertones. NNPC finds it difficult to respond to such requests because it is mindful of falling into the trap of being drawn into politics or maligning others.”
He promised to make the monthly financial and operations reports of the corporation more accessible by publishing the soft copies of the reports from January to May 2019.
