READ HOW NIGERIA LOST $17B IN OIL UNDER JONATHAN

The prevalent corruption in the oil and gas
industry is one reason why the country is going
through dire economic conditions right now.
According to Sun News, Honorable Johnson
Agbonayinma of the Egor/Ikpoba-okha
constituency in the House of Representatives
alleged last month that $17 billion in oil and
liquefied natural gas was exported from Nigeria
without being properly declared between 2011
and 2014, when Goodluck Jonathan was still
ruling.
This was latest allegation of multibillion-dollar
graft directed at Nigeria’s oil industry. This
corruption has led to oil production falling to
around 1.5 million barrels per-day from its normal
level of over two million barrels. This led to the
economic recession in the second quarter of this
year.
Also the federal government believes that
international oil companies are at least partially
responsible for the missing money under
Goodluck Jonathan.
This is why, in a series of lawsuits filed earlier
this year, Nigeria claimed several oil majors,
including American firm Chevron and Italy’s Eni,
didn’t declare $12.7 billion worth of crude and
natural gas exports.
According to Dolapo Oni, head of energy
research at Ecobank, Nigeria doesn’t measure its
oil production based on how much individual oil
wells produce, but rather how much oil leaves
through its export terminals. That approach is
vulnerable to easy manipulation and therefore a
loophole for corruption.
Oni explained that if pipelines and wellheads had
meters, regulators would be better able to track
where Nigeria’s oil is going, and figure out
exactly how much oil the country produces.
“That’s part of where the corruption in industry
is, because once the metering is done, there’ll be
no more gaps or loopholes, if we had efficient
metering, there’s no way either party would be
lying,” Oni said.
Speaking on the current state of the economy,
Oni concluded: “The government is just broke
and willing to go through every transaction in the
oil and gas business to make sure that if there’s
any money that they didn’t earn, they can get it
now.”
Dauda Garuba, the Nigerian Officer at the
Natural Resource Governance Institute says oil
companies have rejected calls to put meters on
oil infrastructure, saying it would be too
expensive.
The Petroleum Industry Bill would reform
Nigeria’s oil sector but has languished in the
national assembly for years. One of those
reforms could be to mandate metering on all
segments of the oil supply chain, Garuba said.
Garuba said of Nigeria’s lawmakers: “For me, I
think they’ve been sleeping on their rights and
their responsibility forever, it’s also getting
worrisome that each time you hear of scandals
like this, nothing gets to come of it.”
Meanwhile, Senator Jeremiah Useni has called
for President Buhari to kill all those guilty of
corruption. He said this during his Independence
Day address.
He said: “Public officers stole a lot of money. As
far as I am concerned, such people need to be
dealt with the very way Jerry Rawlings did in
Ghana.
“We must support what President Buhari is
doing. We must recover stolen funds.” Rawling
who seized power in 1997 through a coup carried
out what he termed “house-cleaning” when
former government officials suspected of corrupt
practises were killed.
“More than 300 Ghanaians were either killed or
disappeared during his revolutionary approach
which some have criticised as being too strict
and undemocratic.”




Source :naijaloaded
Edited by DANIEL IKECHUKWU EKWUNIFE