Senate has commended the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for responding to the motion moved during a plenary session by Senator Kabiru Marafa, chairman, Committee on Petroleum Downstream Sector, on the theft of petroleum products kept in the farm tanks of two oil companies and urged the corporation to take more radical measures to avoid recurrence.
The senate in a statement said the legislative chamber advised that NNPC should go beyond the sacking and redeployment of a few officials but initiate a comprehensive restructuring of its operations which presently allow officials and other firms to appropriate national resources for their personal use, thereby contributing to the suffering of Nigerians.
“The Senate is appalled that NNPC is not contemplating on doing something about the involvement of officials of the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC) which actually played key roles in the missing products case.
“It is instructive that NNPC did not do anything on the case until the matter was raised on the floor of the Senate and the press picked the matter up from the motion.”
“The unauthorised sale of 132 million litres of fuel kept in the storage tanks of MRS and Capital Oil designated as strategic reserves is a grave occurrence. This probably is not the first time it is happening and NNPC must review its operations.
“It should, in fact, carry out a shake-up in the PPMC.”
