Publish crude swaps, other transaction data, Policy Alert urges NNPCL

Abuja, Nigeria/ Policy Alert, a civil society organisation working on economic and ecological justice in Nigeria, has called on NNPC Limited (NNPCL), to publish data on the controversial crude oil swaps that it managed between 2010 and 2015. The organisation also asked NNPCL to urgently address gaps in the proactive disclosure of other critical data on its business to the public.

The call was made weekend during a Policy Dialogue on using beneficial ownership data to fight corruption in the oil and gas industry held in Abuja by the civil society organisation in partnership with the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

Speaking to the media at the event, the organisation’s Executive Director, Tijah Bolton-Akpan, observed: “It appears that with its transformation into a limited liability company, most of the transactional and operational data which was already being proactively disclosed by the former corporation was yanked off the successor company’s website and we are yet to see any effort by the new NNPCL to address this serious gap. NNPCL is an EITI supporting company and that comes with enormous transparency obligations which the company cannot afford to rollback at this time.”

The organisation noted that some of the companies involved in the controversial crude swaps between 2010 and 2015 are subsidiaries of the NNPCL, but the traded volumes, payments received by the government, the status of outstanding liabilities owed the federation, and ultimate ownership of companies that played various roles across the swap value chain were still shrouded in secrecy.

.“These companies were involved in complicated transactions worth billions of dollars with third parties whose ultimate beneficial owners are unknown, many of which are either registered in secrecy jurisdictions or have affiliations with powerful people in Nigeria. The recent bribery and corruption scandal involving oil trader Glencore in some countries including Nigeria really puts the NNPCL on the spotlight and further reinforces our call for a comprehensive audit of the swaps, especially from the perspective of who the ultimate owners of the companies are. That way, we can tell the links between the companies involved in the swaps and some politically exposed persons in Nigeria who may have been benefiting from the rot.

“As a company owned by the Nigerian government in trust for the citizens, NNPCL owes the public a duty of disclosure. We are committed to working with the NNPCL to improve its performance on transparency and accountability, and to ensure that powerful people do not exploit hidden company ownership to escape accountability for the corruption that riddled Nigeria’s crude oil swaps.”