PENGASSAN opposes El-Rufai’s call to scrap NNPC

Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has described the call for the scrapping of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) by the Kaduna State’s Governor Nasir el-Rufai is ill- informed and unnecessary.

The labour union agreed, that corruption issue in the NNPC mentioned by the governor was a problem hindering Nigeria’s growth and development in the oil and gas sector as a whole, but suggested that “government deal with the corruption in the system, but not to throw away the baby with the bath water.”

According to the group, political interference is the bane of the corporation. It argued that instead of killing the NNPC, what the governor should have called for was the reorganisation of the corporation and its subsidiaries to function effectively with clearer mandate, empowerment and improved financial approval authority without undue political interference.

Reacting to the governor’s comment in a paper he delivered during the 7th Professor Wole Soyinka’s birthday lecture on Monday, PENGASSAN’s Acting General Secretary, Mr. Lumumba Okugbawa, said instead of “kill the NNPC,” the governor should have called for the insulation of the corporation from undue political interference that had distracted the organisation.

Read also: El-Rufai wants NNPC scrapped

The association called on government to instill in NNPC, the culture of corporate governance and career management, requiring a legislative review to “ensure that the board of NNPC is headed by technocrats and not politicians; infuse compliance with global best practices and competitiveness, responsibility, transparency and accountability of all accruing revenue and expenditure in the national oil company; ensure that audit of NNPC and Subsidiaries’ business and investment relationships, operations, financing, procurements are carried out and published at appropriate intervals.”

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