FRIDAY: 3rd September, 2021: Media adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, Femi Adesina, has said that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) declared a net profit in 2020 because the president “did not use it as his personal Automated Teller Machine (ATM)”.
Buhari, who is also the minister for petroleum resources, announced last week that the NNPC recorded N287 billion profit after tax (PAT) for the year ended December 31, 2020.
The president noted that NNPC losses were reduced from N803 billion in year 2018 to N1.7 billion in year 2019 and the eventual declaration of net profit in 2020, claiming that the declaration of profit is the first in the 44-year history of the oil company!
According to the NNPC's 2019 financial statement, the corporation posted a profit of N111.59 billion in its 2017 operations.
Adesina, in an article titled; ‘How Buhari Broke The Jinx At NNPC,’ which was released on Thursday, said that the development occurred because Buhari refused to operate NNPC like an Automated Teller Machine (ATM).
The article read, “Well, it happened because perhaps for the first time in the history of the country, and of the NNPC, there is a President who is not using the place like a personal Automated Teller Machine (ATM)
“He (Buhari) is not collecting millions upon millions of dollars by fiat, nor is he giving directives for any under-the-table deal. And that President also happens to be the Minister for Petroleum Resources.”
Adesina quoted the group managing director of NNPC, Mele Kyari, as saying that Buhari “has never made any demand of us, asked for a single thing for himself or any individual”.
According to him, the corporation also sustained in the last one and a half years, the publication of its Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR).
