. . . Calls for EFCC probe

A civil society organization has described the claim by Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) that it spent N100 billion to overhaul Nigeria’s moribund crude refineries in 2021 as an unmitigated assault on the collective civility and intelligence of Nigerians.

Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) which made the claim in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, on Monday, said even after the heavy sum was spent the refineries could refine “even a bottle of petrol,” adding that such financial reports amounts to stirring unrest in the country.

According to HURIWA, it was inexplicable and amounts to one of the wonders of the World that the government was claiming to be injecting billions on maintenance to sustain the four near-moribund refineries in the Country whereas ordinary Nigerians with no licences to refine crude oil are all over Rivers and Niger Delta states running successful refineries that are refining crude products illegally.

“The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is therefore called upon, if it is not captured by forces behind the worst historical heist of Nigeria’s commonwealth, to immediately transparent, open and fool-proof investigation into the financial transactions of the NNPC as it pertains to the near-moribund refineries that are now cash cows for reactionaries embedded in the federal government,” HURIWA demanded.

The group said that the deliberate mischief by government officials to force down on the throats of Nigerians, the illogical claims of such a humongous expenditure on overhauling dead refineries was an attempt to rouse tensions in the society and to force Nigerians to surge into the streets.

The statement reads in part: “It is unfortunate that the political elites in Abuja who, since the last six and half years unleashed half-baked economic voodoo policies aimed at mass impoverishment of millions of Nigerians, have mistaken the docility and silence of millions of Nigerians in the face of provocative official heists and corruption for idiocy of the majority.

“We are warning these over-fed government officials to stop thinking that Nigerians cannot demand accountability and transparency and therefore they are throwing all kinds of roguish financial reports at our faces, believing that they are beyond reproach or that they are sacred cows. Let these officials respect the constitution and render proper account to stop the imminent unrests that may follow sooner than expected.

“HURIWA is hereby demanding full disclosures by the hierarchy of NNPC because the rights group believes that even in fool’s paradise, government can’t spend or even rationally imagine that it expended a whooping sum of N100 billion to overhaul refineries with no capacity to refine crude to give Nigerians even a ‘Coca-Cola’ bottle of fuel the whole of the year 2021.”

HURIWA said approval of the princely sum of $1.5 billion to rehabilitate refineries that could not refine petrol for the domestic use of buyers in Nigeria was as good as throwing taxpayers cash into the cash guzzling machines of political gamblers and merchants of poverty in Nigeria.

“HURIWA calls it the monumental corruption of the century for any government agency to submit a report claiming to have wasted N100 billion of taxpayers cash on nothing.”

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