Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mallam Mele Kyari, has said that the national oil company was no longer operating an opaque system.
The GMD who spoke at the THISDAY ARISE Group Global Virtual Commemoration of Nigeria’s 60th Independence anniversary, stressed that aside just releasing the audited financial statement for the 2018 financial year, that of 2019 was now ready and will be made public soon.
He noted that the company would continue to push the frontiers of transparency so as to return adequate dividends to its over 200 million shareholders in Nigeria.
He admitted that though there were a lot of negativities in the country, the positives far outweigh the negatives for Nigeria at 60 and expressed the hope that Nigeria was on the right trajectory under the present administration.
According to him, in the last 30 to 40 years the NNPC has provided enormous resources from oil, but maintained that under the Muhammadu Buhari government, the political interference that bedeviled the corporation in the past no longer exists.
He added that with the current spirit of accountability pervading the corporation, the NNPC was set to survive the next 30, 40 years and transform the country’s economic story.
He said his leadership of the national oil company had the rare advantage of independence, insisting that the NNPC can now drive its own growth with the current board.
“I have an advantage that posterity has thrown at me which is that we have a political leadership that doesn’t interfere with what we do today.
“We are now responsible for our decisions and our balance sheet. Many of the things that you are aware happened in the past, do not happen today.
“Therefore, we are now more focused, more business oriented. We feel more accountable. Therefore, the combined result of that is a company that can drive itself. What’s different is a leadership that has a consensus that this company must change.
“We have delivered on everything we said we will do. In the last 43 years, nobody cared about accountability to shareholders, but we have done the books for 2018 and we are ready with the one for 2019,” he said.
