The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el Rufai, has said Nigeria must do away with its “corrupt” oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, or stand the risk of itself being destroyed. He said NNPC runs a parallel government and unilaterally decides what it remits to a nation of 170 million people, while its hundreds of employees feed fat on Nigeria’s resources
“If you don’t kill the NNPC, it will kill Nigeria,” Mr. el-Rufai said Monday at the 7th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series in Abuja, where he was a guest speaker.
Mr. El-Rufai said the NNPC has become so entrenched in corruption that the only way out for Nigeria is not to attempt to salvage the corporation, but to destroy it and create a new oil company. He said he hoped President Muhammadu Buhari will implement that proposal.In the last three years, Mr. el-Rufai said the NNPC retained 42 per cent of Nigeria’s money, and remitted only 58 per cent.