The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Tuesday said that
it did not budget or expend N152 billion as recently claimed in certain
political quarters for the rehabilitation of its four refineries
located in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt.
NNPC, in
statement from its Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Ohi Alegbe, in
Abuja, asked political gladiators in the country to exempt it and its
operation from their political brick-bats, in their desperation for
votes in the forthcoming general elections.
Describing as inaccurate claims that it expended N152 billion in the
Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of its refineries, the corporation frowned
on such deliberate distortion of facts and figures about its operations
by “desperate vote-seeking politicians intent on gaining partisan
advantage by hook or by crook.”
It noted that as a public
entity with fiduciary responsibility to the government and people of
Nigeria, it will remain focused on its mandate rather than to be
distracted by the spate of politically inspired attacks on its
operations.
The corporation specifically described as fiction
the recent report of N152 billion supposedly spent on the repair of
refineries credited to some nondescript civil society organisations, and
stated that the organisation was driven by an overheated imagination.
“Though a decision was taken in 2011 to rehabilitate all refineries
using the Original Refinery Builder (ORB) of each of the refineries, the
corporation made a recourse to a new strategy after the ORBs declined
participation and nominated some partners in their stead who came up
with outrageously unfavorable terms,” the statement said.
It
added that: “The nominated partners, as sole bidders came up with
humongous price offers after two years of thorough and exhaustive scope
of work definition and price negotiations. The proxies were also
unwilling to provide post rehabilitation performance guarantees.”
NNPC said that as an alternative, a new arrangement which kicked off in
October, 2014 and entails phased and simultaneous rehabilitation of all
refineries using in-house and locally available resources in line with
the spirit and letters of the Nigerian content law was initiated by it.
Credit: Chineme Okafor/ThisDay

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