Presidents blamed for oil corruption

Transparency International Nigeria has blamed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his predecessors, Muhammadu Buhari and Olusegun Obasanjo, for the years of unaccounted remittances and fraud in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), according to the Daily Post. This comes after the World Bank Nigeria Development Update report released last week called out the state-owned company for failure to remit crude revenue amounting to N500bn ($310 372 000) to the Federation account for October 2024 and December 2024. The unaccounted billions has stirred fresh controversies over lack of transparency and corruption in the country’s oil behemoth, NNPCL. Similarly, the International Monetary Fund had also called for a more transparent transfer of fuel subsidy gains by the NNPCL in its recent report. The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project on Sunday called for a thorough probe of the unremitted billions. Transparency country director Auwal Rafsanjani said the financial transactions of the state-owned oil firm should be comprehensively audited to unravel all the missing money lost since 1999. Rafsanjani also blamed the National Assembly for the lack of an adequate oversight function on a critical government agency such as the NNPCL. He also criticised Nigerian Presidents for appointing themselves as Petroleum Ministers.