Something murky is going on, Ezekwesili weighs in on the Dangote, NNPCL saga

Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili has weighed in on the ongoing face-off between Alhaji Aliko Dangote and the Dangote Group on the one hand and the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, on the opposing side.
The imbroglio was ignited when Farouk Ahmed, the chief executive officer of Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), accused the newly built Dangote Refinery and other local refineries of producing inferior products compared to the ones imported into the country.
The oil regulator also accused Dangote of plans to monopolize the sector which led to the billionaire businessman saying he was willing to sell his refinery to the NNPCL, while also denying the claims by the regulatory agency.
Ezekwesili who shared her opinion on the issue in a post on her X handle on Tuesday, said there is more to the matter as there is something murky going on.
She called on the government and the NNPCL to come clean and tell Nigerians what is really going on.
“I kept from commenting on the Dangote refinery-NNPC saga to stay true to my mantra that evidence should always inform our opinion,” she wrote.
“However, as more and more information filtered out from both parties, we can reasonably conclude that something seriously murky has gone on and needs to be fully unraveled for public accountability. And urgently too.
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“How can a project that by all definition attained the stature of a “national interest project” be marred in this depth of embarrassing controversy that is playing out in the full glare of local and international investing community?
“Did the @NigeriaGov not tell us it borrowed $3.3Billion from AFREXIM Bank to take a stake in the Dangote refinery?
“When we were in government, I often told the @nnpclimited leadership that they cannot carry on as though there is a “Federal Republic of the NNPC” just because they think of themselves as “the goose that lays the golden egg”.
“The opacity of the NNPC was reason we took great delight in designing the Multi-Stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency International @nigeriaeiti in those early 2000s that I pioneered as Chairperson.
“We went above global minimum voluntary standards of transparency requirements by entrenching ours in an Act that established NEITI as the Transparency Regulator of the Oil and Minerals sector.
“The @NGRPresident owes a duty to Nigerians to immediately use the instrumentality of NEITI to launch an Independent Audit of the Dangote Refinery- NNPC transactions in order to offer the public the true state of play.
“It is in the National Interest to do so”.
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