A former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has called for an independent audit of business dealings between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), and the Dangote Refinery.

This is as the Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Group and owner of the Dangote Refinery, Aliko Dangote, last week, revealed that NNPCL had capped its equity in the Dangote Petroleum Refinery at 7.2 per cent instead of the speculated 20 per cent.

“The agreement was actually 20 per cent which we had with NNPC, and they did not pay the balance of the money up till last year; then we gave them another extension up till June (2024), and they said that they would remain where they have already paid, which is 7.2 per cent. So NNPC owns only 7.2 per cent, not 20 per cent.” Dangote stated.

NNPC confirmed this, saying it decided not to invest further in the refinery.

Reacting to the controversies, Ezekwesili through her official X handle, said she had earlier decided not to speak on the Dangote refinery-NNPC saga.

“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 unravelled for public accountability. And urgently, too,” she stated.

The former minister added, “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 the local and international investing community?

“Did the Nigerian government not tell us it borrowed $3.3bn from Afriexim-Bank to take a stake in the Dangote refinery?”

Ezekwesili recalled that during former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, she told the NNPC that it could not run as a federation on its own.

“When we were in government, I often told the NNPC 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 the reason we took great delight in designing the multi-stakeholders Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency International 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,” she explained.

She called on President Bola Tinubu “to immediately use the instrumentality of NEITI to launch an independent audit of the Dangote refinery-NNPC transaction to offer the public the true state of play.”

Dangote had also alleged that some top officials of the NNPCL own blending plants in Malta.

Dangote had said, “Some of the terminals, some of the NNPC people, and some traders have opened blending plants somewhere off Malta. We all know these areas. We know what they are doing.”

Reacting to this in a post on his X handle, Kyari said he had been inundated with calls from family members and friends, asking if he truly owns a blending plant in Malta.