NIGERIA: Reps halt sale of refineries

THE House of Representa­tives Committee on Privati­sation yesterday, halted the proposed privatisation of the country’s three refineries by the Nigerian National Petro­leum Corporation (NNPC).

The affected refineries are located in Kaduna, Port-Har­court and Warri. The Com­mittee, which is investigating the move to sell the refineries by the NNPC rather than the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) declared that NNPC violated the provisions of the BPE Act Section 2, 2009.

Chairman of the Commit­tee, Ahmed Yerima, further declared that the NNPC acted unilaterally by going ahead with the exercise with­out involving other stake­holders as contained in the Act.

The Committee had be­fore issuing it’s directive insisted on adjourning the hearing due to the absence of the Group Managing Direc­tor of NNPC and Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu.

The lawmakers were not impressed with explanations from the Group Executive Director of the NNPC in charge of Refineries, Anibor Kragha, that he had the full mandate of the Minister to clarify the position of the Corporation on the matter as he is directly involved in managing the refineries.

Members of the Com­mittee kicked against the arrangement, insisting that the Minister of State should appear personally at a later date based on their past expe­riences with the Corporation when its chief executives had failed to honour invitations extended to it.

But after assurances from the NNPC GED that he had the mandate of the Minister to represent him and that he was competent to handle the matter in question, Kragha went on to make his presen­tation along with the Acting BPE Director General, Vin­cent Akpotarie, during which he denied that the Corpora­tion was out to privatise the refineries. According to him, NNPC was only seeking for core investors to invest in the refineries.

In response, the Committee sought to know who autho­rised it to embark on such an exercise without the knowl­edge of the National Assembly and the BPE to which Kragha replied that he needed clarifi­cation on this, saying that he was just appointed into the office.

Kragha’s response irked members of the Committee who reminded him of his ear­lier claim that he was compe­tent to handle the matter. At this stage, Kragha cut in say­ing, “with due respect to this Committee, I was appointed into the office by Mr. Presi­dent who believed my com­petency.”

Declaring his ruling, Yeri­man directed NNPC to stop the exercise immediately al­leging gross violation of the BPE Act.