Nigerians have taken to Twitter to angrily demand the shut down and sell off of one of the three refineries in Africa’s biggest crude exporting country, Kaduna Refinery, which generated zero naira but incurred N64 billion in 2018.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC); owner of the refinery had last week broken a 43-year-old jinx as it published the first ever audited report since its establishment in 1977 where it showed the gross ineptitude of the refinery located in Kaduna.
The 2018 audited financials of the corporation showed that N64 billion incurred summed the total losses suffered by the three refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna in the year to N154 billion.
A twitter user, @Ambrosia_Ijebu wrote that the refineries should be shutdown instead of spending huge funds with no return of investments.
“Banter aside, it is a very good thing that we are getting to see NNPC’s financial statements.
“I hope Nigerians will read it and see why the place needs to be shut down. No sentiments. Shut it down.”
Corroborating his view, @ObiVegas asked “Hmmmmm How can NNPC spends such amount of money without any revenue at all?”
A recent report by the NNPC had indicated that none of the country’s refineries, with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, produced any refined crude between 2019 and 2020.
This development has further renewed the call for the privatization of the refineries.
Stating that it published its audited financial statements online in a bid to improve transparency around its operations, the Corporation also published online the audited accounts of its 20 subsidiaries and business divisions for first time.
The National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) is the group’s most profitable division, according to the statements, signed by Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari. It reported revenue of 5.04 trillion naira ($13 billion) in 2018 and profit of 1.01 trillion naira. That compares with a loss of 1.65 trillion naira in 2017.
The report shows total assets managed by NAPIMS at 18.6 trillion naira, with the oil and gas components valued at 14.2 trillion naira.
Its oil production subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, reported a post-tax profit of 179 billion naira in 2018.
The corporation’s three refineries turned out to be the black sheeps as they reported a combined loss of 154 billion naira with the Kaduna refinery recording zero revenue for that year.
NNPC didn’t publish consolidated audited accounts for the group,
Reacting to the publication of first audited financial statement, Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Waziri Adio, maintained that the disclosure “is good for transparency and accountability.”
“I urge them to make this a regular practice and in open data format,” he said.
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