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The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has called on President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to unbundle the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), saying that massive corruption and embezzlement of public funds through the corporation has not subsided.
General Secretary of the NLC, Comrade John Odah, who made the call while addressing the 2nd Triennial Delegates’ Conference of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in Abuja, said unbundling the NNPC will create greater oversight for its activities. He said the NLC is convinced that the NNPC cannot be "efficient, transparent or corruption-free if it remains the big, integrated and unaccountable monopoly that it is" today. The NLC scribe also stressed the need for the urgent investigation into the activities of the NNPC from 1999 to 2007 because Nigerians, he said, need to know what happened to the resources in the oil sector, especially over the last eight years of the previous administration. "As we know, the oil sector is far more decadent than the power sector, while it has more powerful local and foreign players. Therefore, the House of Representatives needs to demonstrate even greater courage, greater seriousness and greater thoroughness. "All the big players in the Nigerian polity who were involved in the oil sector need to be critically engaged by the House of Representatives. Indeed, the time is now ripe for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was directly in charge as President and Minister of Petroleum, to be summoned," he said. Comrade Odah also called on the federal government to give the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) autonomy to enable the agency carry out its functions effectively, stressing that the DPR is currently incapacitated. He said the DPR requires autonomy to enable it function effectively, especially in view of the fact that the country is currently "unable to monitor the outflow of crude oil, which leaves the country vulnerable to severe plundering on a daily basis." He said the congress also supports fundamental reforms of the Joint Venture Cash Call Regime, saying that from all indications, "Nigeria is being plundered massively through the Joint Venture Cash calls." The NLC scribe also made a case for stability in the pump prices of petroleum products and commended President Umaru Musa Yar’adua for keeping faith with the agreement between government and the organised labour which has guaranteed price stability for close to one year despite rising prices at the international market.
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