APC Disputes PDP’s Claim On Corruption In NNPC

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has disputed the claim made by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that President Muhammadu Buhari should come clean on N9 trillion NNPC contract scam.

In a statement by its Acting National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena on Tuesday, APC said “going by the current oil sector reforms, it is clear that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has not copied the corrupt template past PDP-led administrations used to criminally siphon oil revenues.”

The PDP had in a statement dated August 6th, charged President Buhari-led APC government to tell Nigerians what they know about the N9 trillion ($25 billion) contract scam allegedly perpetrated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, under their watch.

Nabena while reacting to the allegations, said the arbitrary values where inappropriately attached to the claims.

He said, “The subject of a leaked memo purportedly written by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources to the President which came to the fore sometime in October 2017 has since been overtaken by events.

“It is a matter of public knowledge that the author of the memo openly proclaimed that the issues raised in the letter were not on fraud but on governance and suggestions on ways to go about it.

“Secondly, it was clearly stated then by the NNPC in response to the leaked document that apart from the 618km Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline project and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC) production service contracts: All the other transactions mentioned in the memo were not procurement contracts. The NPDC production service contracts have undergone due process, while the AKK contract had not reached the stage of contract award.

“Similarly, the NNPC also stated then that: It should be noted that for both the Crude Term Contract and the Direct Sale and Direct Purchase (DSDP) agreements, there are no specific values attached to each transaction to warrant the values of $10billion and $5billion respectively placed on them in the leaked document.

“Thus it was inappropriate to attach arbitrary values to the shortlists with the aim of classifying the transactions as contracts. They are merely the shortlisting of prospective off-takers of crude oil and suppliers of petroleum products under agreed terms”.