(NNPC. Photo Credit; X.com)
The former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), Umar Ajiya, has maintained that the company and its workers are not thieves.
Ajiya made the remark during a session of the Senate Public Accounts Committee investigating alleged misappropriation of funds, in response to an allegation by a lawmaker representing the Edo North Senatorial District, Adams Oshiomhole, who described the NNPCL as a house of thieves.
Ajiya clarified that ₦2.9 billion was spent on the incorporation and rebranding of the company, explicitly denying claims that ₦5.8 billion was spent on the registration process itself.
“We are not thieves. N2.9 billion was used to register NNPC, not N5.8 billion. I have been presenting and defending the company’s reports to this committee over the last five or six years.
“I need to give assurance to Mr Chairman and distinguished Senators present here today, and in fact all Nigerians, that there is no money missing.
Let me make it very clear that if money was actually missing in NNPC during our period, we would not have had the courage to publish the audited accounts in the past 44 years.
“The accounts were prepared and never kept hidden from the public, and even sometimes with the Auditor-General of the Federation.
So we made it a duty upon us not only to give to the Auditor-General, but also to put it on our website, let Nigerians criticise and scrutinise to get out of the opaqueness and that lack of trust that the public had on NNPC,” he said.