Sanusi's claim on Missing $20bn: No presidential order on Kerosene subsidy -NNPC

'It is one thing for the President to give a directive, it is another
thing for the directive to be communicated down to the various
agencies of government'

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has said it never
received any presidential order to stop subsidy payment on kerosene
during the late President Umaru Yar'Adua administration.

The acting Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division, NNPC, Dr.
Omar Farouk Ibrahim, told Saturday PUNCH in Abuja on Thursday that the
corporation should not be blamed for not implementing the directive on
kerosene subsidy because the NNPC did not get any instruction to end
subsidy payments on kerosene.

He said, "The point of contention is about kerosene subsidy. We do not
doubt that there could be a directive. But what the NNPC is saying is
that it is one thing for the President to give a directive, it is
another thing for the directive to be communicated down to the various
agencies of government.

"The communication line in matters like this is between the President
and the minister. And the minister will direct subsidiaries or
parastatals working under the ministry. So in a situation where a
directive was given by the President to a minister, then for reasons
that are best known to the minister or the ministry, that information
was not communicated to the parastatals, then you can't hold us
responsible for not implementing the directive. As far as we are
concerned, we have not received the directive."

He argued that the NNPC was a structured organisation and would not
take decisions based on "hearsay."

Asked to comment on the allegedly missing $20bn, Ibrahim said the
corporation would be able to reconcile its account before the end of
the week. According to him, the NNPC would brief the Senate on its
findings soon, stressing that "a large chunk of this amount is what we
are reconciling now and we believe that by the end of the week, we
should be able to give our report to the Senate."

But sources at the corporation told one of our correspondents in Abuja
that the CBN governor's statement on the directive mandating the
petroleum ministry to stop subsidy on kerosene was true.

Senior management sources at the corporation faulted the then Minister
of Petroleum Resources, Mr. Rilwanu Lukman, for not conveying the
directive of the late President Musa Yar'Adua to agencies and
parastatals under the ministry.

An official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitive nature of the subject, said, "I will give you the
background. This is something we are going to present to the National
Assembly. It is true that in 2009, President Yar'Adua gave a
directive. His principal secretary wrote him a memo which he approved
that subsidy on kerosene be eliminated