Anthony Iwuoma
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that the clampdown on vandals by joint security efforts has hugely reduced the losses from vandalism and oil theft from N800 billion in 2018 to less than N82 billion.
According to the Group Managing Director (GMD), Mele Kyari, the NNPC management is proud of the feat, adding that the level of losses suffered from vandalism along the pipelines from Atlas Cove to Ilorin had been impossible to manage.
Kyari spoke during the official handover of four patrol vehicles and four quad bikes to the Taskforce against vandalism, Operation AWATSE at the headquarters, Western Naval Command (WNC) Apapa in Lagos.
He said: “We sought support of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) who instructed the set-up of the operation AWATSE that led to the arrest of this situation reducing our losses to less than 50 percent of what we knew at that time.
“It enabled us to increase flow into that line from less than 800,000 to 2.6 million tons by the end of 2019. Currently, we know that we will exceed this target. So, it is a huge success because without the intervention of Operation AWATSE and all the associated support from all the service- the Nigeria Police, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), we would not have achieved this. So, it is a very critical assignment for us and we are very happy that this has happened.
“We promised Nigerians that this company, our own company owned by all of us, the over 200 million Nigerians will be accountable to all.
“We are very accountable to all. Today, everybody knows what we are doing. We are the only company that publishes its operations account on a monthly basis. We have never published the annual financial statement of this company but it was done for 2018 and 2019.
“Nigerians now know what we are doing on their behalf and that has caused us to improve in our performance.
“We have reduced our losses from what was N800 billion in 2018 to less than N82 billion and we are very proud of this. Therefore, in terms of accountability and transparency, we have achieved that and we also promise that we will perform excellently on behalf of the Nigeria people.
“That’s a reflection of the financial statement, that’s what the financial statement tells you that this company has come of age. We have automated almost over 80 cent of our processes, we have taken out discretion in over 80 per cent of our processes. In that way we know this company by the close of this year, we would declare our dividend to Nigerians.”
