The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has once again found itself at the centre of the storm. For a corporation that to a great extent dictates the pendulum of Nigeria’s economy, the current issue under focus has become a litmus test on the integrity and corporate image of the body.
Since September 2013 when the then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi raised an alarm over the alleged failure of the corporation to remit $49.8 billion to the bank, virtually every Nigerian has become finance expert.
Even those who are yet to comprehend the vivid picture of the issues raised have suddenly branded NNPC as an organization that is fraud ridden.
Already, Sanusi is being showcased in some quarters as a patriot tailored towards salvaging the oil sector by shouting to roof tops that such sum of money is missing.
Sanusi is also being branded as one who has presented himself as a hero the defender and protector of Nigeria’s wealth; hence he now cuts the messianic picture of saints.
At the peak of this raging storm, the trio of Sanusi, Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala and Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke has been at each other’s jugglers battling without end to sail through the murky waters of controversy and to assert their integrity through their respective submissions.
But the show down got messier when figures became puns in a financial game of chase and Sanusi was the first to push the knight in a show of summersault.
Sanusi told the Senate Committee on finance that against the $49.8 billion that the reconciliatory team has suddenly discovered that it is only $12.86 billion that is yet to be found.
Deepening the gale of confusion was the submission of Okonjo-Iweala who interjected that it was not $12.8 billion that has not been accounted for but $10.8billion, which Sanusi chose to keep a graveyard silence.
Painting the more scattered picture of confusion is the fact that Sanusi was part of the team that took part in the reconciliation process that reported that it was only $10.8 billion that has not been reconciled, yet told Nigerians after the exercise that it was $ 12.8 billion.
Sanusi raised yet another alarm of $67 billion worth of crude shipped by the NNPC between January 2012 and July 2013, alleging that the CBN took delivery of $47 billion as remittance from the corporation.
He, against this back drop accused the NNPC of not remitting the balance of $20 billion and contended that the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, with two other companies shipped $6 billion worth of crude outside the country and failed to remit same to the federation account.
The minister for finance may have chosen not to delve into the fresh allegations from Sanusi but sort to clear the air on the issue of $10.8 billion in her final report making a breakdown of the report.
While Nigerians await the report of the forensic examination it has become instructive that one understudy the import of Sanusi claims, his point of departure and the under currents inherent in this sudden war of wit and attrition.
Shortly after ex-president OlusegunObasanjo made public the controversial letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, making plethora of allegations and creating all imagery of innuendoes, the country was taken aback by that. He depicted Jonathan as a leader who lacks the mental intellectual and resolute capacity to be firm on issues that the nation holds dear and sacred.
Granted that Sanusi as a civil servant cannot be a card-carrying member of any political party, his utterances and body language speak volumes of the hand of All Progressives Congress (APC) and the voice of the CBN boss.
Opposition political parties are there to convince the Nigerian electorate that they can produce a better government, but it becomes astonishing when a man that is heading an organ of a government in power chooses to indict himself by telling Nigerians and himself (Sanusi) and the rest of government organs are not prudent in the management of the country’s wealth.
Essien wrote in from Awka, Anambra state