Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been hijacked by a cabal around President Bola Tinubu.<\/p>\n
The opposition leader said future of the country has been \u201ceffectively mortgaged to President Bola Tinubu, his family, and associates\u201d, saying that \u201ceven after Tinubu leaves office, it will be nearly impossible to break these shackles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atiku in a statement signed by Paul Ibe, his Media Adviser, said, \u201cJust as Alpha Beta, Primero, and others act as Tinubu\u2019s proxies in Lagos, managing critical sectors and generating revenue for him and his family, he has begun to replicate this at the federal level.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also expressed surprise at the operations of the NNPC and how the government-owned oil company had put its retail arm under the control of OVH, a company in which Oando, led by Wale Tinubu, owns 49%.<\/p>\n
Atiku regretted that his \u201cintention to privatize the NNPC and increase its transparency has been overshadowed by what he describes as the criminal hijack of the NNPC by corporate cabals around the current president.\u201d<\/p>\n
He narrated that \u201cIn October 2022, just five months before the elections, the NNPC Retail controversially announced it had acquired OVH and all its filling stations. NNPCL already had about 550 filling stations across the country but claimed it was enhancing its capacity by acquiring OVH, which had only 94 stations and 100 others leased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NNPC did not disclose the purchase price of OVH or the terms of the acquisition. A Freedom of Information request by an online medium was also rejected by the NNPC, which claimed to be a private company despite still being government-owned.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing this dubious deal, Mele Kyari was controversially retained as NNPC GMD despite his incompetence. Tinubu then appointed his former boss at Mobil, turned ally, Pius Akinyelure, as NNPC Chairman, while he himself took on the role of Minister of Petroleum.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a move that defies economic logic, OVH, previously owned by NNPC Retail, has now acquired NNPC Retail. This absurd situation means that Wale Tinubu\u2019s Oando now owns 49% of NNPC Retail. Moreover, Nigeria paid Wale Tinubu a significant sum to facilitate the Tinubu family\u2019s acquisition of the national oil company. This represents a clear case of illogical business transactions and abuse of office by President Tinubu, who has prevented NNPC from becoming a public liability company as stipulated by the PIA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atiku acknowledged that the NNPC and its leadership are under legislative investigation but expressed skepticism about the process\u2019s credibility due to the vested interests of those conducting the investigation.<\/p>\n
Atiku also commented on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project which he said is under litigation.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cThe Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists, reported that the coastal highway project has been taken to court and revealed a close relationship between Tinubu\u2019s son, Seyi, and Gilbert Chagoury, who was awarded the contract without competitive bidding.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had earlier claimed that the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project was fraudulent, but the government denied it. Now, the matter is in court. It is also concerning that Chagoury and Tinubu have a business relationship, and their children are business partners, as revealed by the OCCRP<\/p>\n
This indicates a conflict of interest. It is no surprise that the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and the Sokoto-Badagry Coastal Highway, which together will cost over $24 billion, were approved without competitive bidding. It seems that whatever Tinubu wants, he gets.\u201d Atiku said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has said the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been hijacked by a cabal around President Bola Tinubu. The opposition leader said future of the country has been \u201ceffectively mortgaged to President Bola Tinubu, his family, and associates\u201d, saying that \u201ceven after Tinubu leaves office, it will be nearly impossible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44771,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44769\/revisions\/44771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}