ABUJA – The Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has disclosed that his administration if elected to office, will sack the top management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
Obi said that this will curb the current oil theft plaguing the country’s economy.
He said this while speaking at the 52nd Annual Accountants ICAN Conference in Abuja on Wednesday on the theme “Accounting As A Requisite for Sustainable Governance.”
Obi who bemoaned the level of corruption in the polity described the scourge as a big Elephant in the Room that must be exited for the house to be properly developed.
He said that if elected Nigeria’s President, he intends to take corruption headlong.
“It is no secret that corruption has been endemic and one of the biggest obstacles to our economic progress in Nigeria. Corruption is the big elephant in the room”
“In the past few days, we have seen videos of illegal pipelines connected to national oil pipeline networks, running for kilometres… where billions of dollars that should have been used for development and welfare, have been illegally siphoned away, for up to nine years, according to reports.
“What I first expected was that the hierarchy of our top oil management bureaucracy will immediately resign, because, without mincing words, this is irrefutable evidence of their incompetence, if not collaboration. My administration, when we come in, will tackle this corruption head-on. We will have zero tolerance for corruption,” he added.
The LP candidate who accused Accountants in the country of aiding corruption said “If you look at the written financial regulations in any establishment, you will see watertight regulations of auditing, vetting, tendering, vouchering, joint signatories and other safeguards, designed to check embezzlement and corruption, yet these sharp practices and misappropriated sums continue to rise, and I understand that there is now a Nigerian record of almost N109 billion allegedly embezzled by an accountant.”
He asked ICAN to “increase the level of peer surveillance and internal discipline among your ranks, if we cannot properly account for our finances, the country is finished, let us as accountants, do more to check and stop corruption.”
The former Anambra State governor also stressed that Accounting is a requisite in ensuring sustainable governance and a stabilising factor in development as Proper accounting serves as checks on the activities of the three arms of government as well as the three tiers of government.
He further spoke on the level of fiscal discipline he intends to bring into the system to block wastages and proper utilization of available resources.
This is as he assured that his administration will “ensure sustainability and resilience, we will stop borrowing for consumption. All loans must be invested in regenerative projects. We shall pursue a drastic reduction in cost of governance and corruption; improve ease of doing business to attract Foreign Direct Investment to jumpstart industrialization and when borrowing is unavoidable, it will be strictly for production.”