by Ranti Joseph

Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, said the allegations levelled on her over the alleged missing funds from the reserves of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and also of her wasteful spending were made because of the reforms contained in the Petroleum Industry Bill.

She said this while fielding questions from the media in Abuja on Wednesday. “In that bill are all the reforms needed to tear NNPC apart, make it a National Oil company, an equity share company through transparency, accountability and responsibility and reduce corruption in the industry.

“We did all theses and we put them in place to reduce corruption, so for me to be tagged with various tags of corruption, $10 million jet purchases, who buys jet for $10 million dollars for goodness sake?

“And $20 billion missing money for which PwC had done a report and the $1.48 billion which is not missing, which is actually money transferred by the NNPC to NPDC which is a subsidiary and NPDC has actually started making payments under my directives. I have said during our time that there are gaps in the NNPC and I said that openly,” she said.

Alison-Madueke who said while in office she has stepped on a lot of toes of some cabals in the oil and gas industry explained that NNPC has been positioned to go forward in the industry.

“It is true that the revenue profile is not sustainable. But we have done our best and the Nigerian oil and gas sector is today in a better shape than it has ever been in terms of achievements that we have recorded.

“So let me state it clearly for the records that Nigeria is my country and I am not going anywhere. I love my country and I do think that I have done the best for my country and I would also like to point these malicious, malevolence, vindictive libels need to stop.

“We have done enough for this industry, we cannot please everybody. Yes, we have stepped on toes but we did that in the best interest of Nigeria and we have opened up the oil and gas industry to all Nigerians, thousands of Nigerians have benefited from our reforms in the system.”

Janeth J