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Former Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, has called on President Bola Tinubu to investigate issues arising from Dangote Refinery.
Oby Ezekwesili said the issues surrounding Dangote Refinery and revelations from Aliko Dangote showed something seriously murky may have been going on in Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
“We can reasonably conclude that something seriously murky has gone on and needs to be fully unravelled 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 local and international investing community?” Ezekwesili said on Tuesday, on her X handle.
She added, “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 NNPCL 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’.”
Ezekwesili called on President Tinubu to direct the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) to kick off an independent auditing of Dangote Refinery and NNPCL transactions.
“The opacity of the NNPC was reason we took great delight in designing the Multi-Stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency International 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 Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) as the Transparency Regulator of the Oil and Minerals sector.
“The Nigeria 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,” she added.
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