President Muhammadu Buhari has
instructed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to review
agreements behind a programme to swap crude for refined products, his
spokesman said on Monday.
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency and
intelligence service began an investigation in May into whether the
government was losing money through opaque contracts in which crude oil
worth billions of dollars is given to traders in the exchanges.
That probe was set up by the
administration led by Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. Buhari
was inaugurated as president of Africa’s top crude producer and most
populous nation on May 29 after winning an election on an
anti-corruption platform.
“If the president says we must tidy up,
then we must tidy up,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Petroleum
Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
The Nigerian Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative has said there was a loss of at least $600
million in revenue due to a discrepancy between the value of the crude
and the products delivered. The figure was taken from its 2009-2011 and
2012 audits of the oil and gas industry.
Buhari’s advisors have recommended a
comprehensive overhaul of Africa’s biggest oil industry and increased
borrowing to help pay off $20 billion of government arrears.
He has been advised to end a programme
that heavily subsidises gasoline and relies on imports for the bulk of
Nigeria’s domestic demand due to an underperforming refining system.
The subsidy, which was revealed to have
paid out more than $6 billion in fraudulent claims in 2012, is proving
to be increasingly costly.
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