Oluwatosin Enesi
Ezekwesili stated that this is necessary to provide the public with the true state of affairs, insisting that it is in the national interest to do so.
In a statement on her X handle on Monday, the former minister said evidence has shown that something seriously murky has occurred and needs to be fully unravelled for public accountability.
She said:
“I kept from commenting on the Dangote refinery-NNPC saga to stay true to my mantra that evidence should always inform our opinion.
“However, as more and more information filtered out from both parties, we can reasonably conclude that something seriously murky has gone on and needs to be fully unraveled for public accountability. And urgently too.
“How can a project that by all definition attained the stature of a ‘national interest project’ be marred in this depth of embarrassing controversy that is playing out in the full glare of the local and international investing community?
“Did the Nigeria Government not tell us it borrowed $3.3 billion from AFREXIM Bank to take a stake in the Dangote refinery?
“When we were in government, I often told the NNPC limited leadership that they cannot carry on as though there is a ‘Federal Republic of the NNPC’ just because they think of themselves as ‘the goose that lays the golden egg’.
“The opacity of the NNPC was the reason we took great delight in designing the Multi-Stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in those early 2000s that I pioneered as Chairperson. We went above global minimum voluntary standards of transparency requirements by entrenching ours in an Act that established NEITI as the Transparency Regulator of the Oil and Minerals sector.
“The Nigerian President owes a duty to Nigerians to immediately use the instrumentality of NEITI to launch an independent audit of the Dangote Refinery-NNPC transactions in order to offer the public the true state of play. It is in the national interest to do so.”
Our Reporter
