WE HAVE CUT NNPC LOSSES BY N800BN WITHIN ONE YEAR- MELE KYARI

GMD NNPC, Mele Kyari 

By Our Reporter

The group managing director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, yesterday held a media parley with energy journalists under the auspices of the National Association of Energy Correspondents (NAEC) in Abuja. He spoke on wide-ranging issues and developments within the corporation and the oil and gas industry. Excerpts…

 Since you were appointed the GMD of NNPC, how transparent have the financial activities of the NNPC been?

The NNPC under my watch has been very transparent regarding handling of its financial activities. We went ahead and published the 2019 audited report and were able to learn and cut cost and became more efficient. There is no company in the country which has cut its losses within one financial year by N800billion. We have improved efficiency by cutting 97% in our losses. Our vision is to make NNPC become a company of excellence and declare dividends to Nigerians and shareholders. We are optimistic that at the end of 2020, NNPC should be able to declare dividends to Nigerians in spite of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Does President Buhari dictate to you on how to run the NNPC?

Not at all. I have been around in this company for 29 years and have worked closely with top management of the NNPC for about 15 years. This is the only president who has never asked NNPC to do something. Under no circumstances has President Muhammudu Buhari controlled what we do.

How has the corporation fared regarding remittance of funds into the federation account?

These are truly difficult times for our Industry, but I am proud to say that we were able to maintain our obligations to the federation account for seven months without any fail despite the huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the oil and gas industry.

NNPC has never published its audited financial statement in 43 years. We came and started doing that. We released the 2018 financial statement. We were not afraid of doing that and there were lots of criticisms that we lost money in refinery operations and pipeline business