Ribadu Report: No Pranks This Time

The drama that attended the formal presentation of the report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force to President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday shocked many observers of our national tragic-comedy.  Two members of the task force, Messrs Steve Oronsaye and Ben Oti, openly accused the chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, of not following established protocol of “carrying all members along”; the chairman retorted that his accusers turned themselves to absentee members by not attending meetings. President Jonathan commendably played the statesman by urging aggrieved members to turn in their reports and comments formally if they had any contrary view.

The clash was not totally unexpected. The report had leaked to Reuters and several Nigerian media, making popular social media websites go abuzz in the last week especially on the alleged litany of sleaze it contained. For example, the leaked report said the country had lost over N16 trillion in the last 10 years to criminal activities in the oil and gas sector; N10 trillion had been lost to crude oil theft, from a yearly loss of 250,000 barrels per day or N1 trillion yearly, and that N178 billion worth of refined petroleum products had been stolen from the pipelines.

It also revealed that $5 billion short-payment was discovered from sale of domestic crude oil to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). About $183 million (N28.7 billion) remained outstanding from signature bonuses between 2002 and 2012, while the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) recorded another $2.9 million (N455 million) outstanding from concessionaires. Outstanding royalties totaled $3.027 billion (N475.2 billion). Nigeria lost $29 billion (N4.55 trillion) to deficit payment from the sale of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), while $115 million (N18 billion) outstanding was discovered un-reconciled from the amount of penalties for gas flaring. Even the penalties of about $58 million (N9 billion) remained uncollected from the companies involved. The report estimated the scale and volume of crude theft to be as high as 250,000 barrels per day, closer to 10 per cent of daily production, amounting to as high as N1 trillion annually.

The revelations in the public domain, even if unofficial, were truly frightening. Now that the final report submitted to President Jonathan is virtually the same as the one earlier in circulation, the worst fears of Nigerians have been confirmed: Nigeria has been a victim of serial robbery. The reservations of some members of the Task Force must not be allowed to cast any shadow over the urgent need for the security agencies to bring all those indicted to justice. We thank the Ribadu committee for showing the nation some of the reasons why Nigeria is a rich nation with poor people. President Jonathan must live up to his promise to clean the Augean stable.