The new administration of Nigeria’s president elect Muhammadu Buhari will first sack and replace the top management of the Nigeria National Petroleum Commission, NNPC, before restructuring the oil company. Then it will investigate its accounts to restore credibility, APC sources say.
A bill will be drafted to break the NNPC into four entities, as already prescribed in the latest PIB draft. But it will also, crucially, remove the oil minister from the NNPC’s board of directors to curb political interference.
One APC source also told Reuters that more generally, the petroleum minister’s current powers would be heavily trimmed.
Oil and gas will have separate companies for upstream, with a third covering pipelines and refining, and a fourth will be an inspectorate. It could be submitted to the National Assemblyy in the first quarter of next year, one NASS APC source said.
The immediate implication of all these is that foreign oil firms keen to know how Nigeria’s president elect plans to tax them could be waiting a long time as he makes ending corruption and reforming the opaque national oil company his most urgent sector priorities. Read full
