By Comfort Olayinka
The National Transparency Watch has faulted the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) for tailing to make the fair disclosures that Nigerians demanded following its admission of selling products from Port Harcourt Refinery to Dubai-based Gulf Transport & Trading Limited (GTT).
In a statement signed by the Coordinator of National Transparency Watch, Ademola Moses, in Abuja on Monday, expressed disappointment that NNPCL has yet to respond to the demands of Nigerians 72 hours after it admitted selling a cargo of Port-Harcourt low sulfur straight run fuel oil (LSSR) to GTT, noting that such reluctance attests to NNPCL having something to hide about the transaction.
Moses expressed concerns that “NNPCL’s choice of GTT rings alarm bells considering that this same entity has featured prominently in all of the corporation’s infractions, especially in its dabbling into contaminated and sanction-tainted Russian oil.
“Consequently, we challenge NNPCL to disprove that GTT is not connected with its scam enterprise of bringing blended Nigerian products affiliated with sanctioned products into Nigeria.
“The corporation should convince Nigerians that the products it claimed to have traded from Nigeria are not meant to be swapped with off-spec fuel from Eastern Europe, which reports have confirmed are still being imported even though NNPCL is bizarrely exporting low sulfur straight run fuel oil, which could have been further processed to meet domestic demand.
“We further challenge NNPCL to deny that its off-taker, GTT is not one of the companies that Adisu Aliyu set up in Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) alongside another company, Polypro Trading and that Adisu Aliyu is not fronting for NNPCL CEO, Mele Kyari, for whom he runs the two companies,” Moses said.
He further revealed that “the cargo that DTT reportedly took was a ploy to make people believe that what they had set up in Eleme (Port Harcourt) is a refinery. But what they will do is transship that cargo to Central Europe and send it back to Nigeria.”
“This is nothing short of state-supported deceit. Adisa Aliyu is the owner of Matrix Energy, who is the arrowhead of the criminal blending going on in Malta. He has a substantial investment in the rehabilitation of the PH Blending plant and this is them fast-tracking their cashing out,” he revealed.
