AUDIT report by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts shows that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) under Group Managing Director, Mr Mele Kyari, spent N5.9 billion to change the organisation’s name to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited in 2021.

This was disclosed during the committee’s latest review of audit reports concerning the state-owned energy firm on Thursday, where the Senate committee led by Chairman of the committee, Senator Aliyu Wadada, demanded clarification over the use of N5 billion to change the organisation’s name following reforms introduced under the Petroleum Industry Act.

Members of the committee said the amount appeared excessive for a corporate name change and insisted that the management must provide detailed justification for the expenditure.

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“NNPC paid N2.9 billion as incorporation expenses from petroleum product proceeds,” Mr Wadada said. “NAPIMS also charged N2.9 billion against crude oil revenue for the same purpose. This resulted in a combined total of N5.9 billion being spent simply to change the name from NNPC to NNPCL. This is unacceptable.”

Other discrepancies

Wadada explained that the committee’s concerns centre on N210 trillion highlighted in audit reports covering the operations of the national oil company within the six-year period. The amount consists of two separate figures, N103 trillion and N107 trillion, which the committee believes were not satisfactorily accounted for in the firm’s financial records.

He noted that the Senate panel had earlier sent 19 queries to the NNPCL regarding the audit observations in 2025. However, lawmakers said the responses received from the company did not sufficiently address the issues raised.

In its defence, the NNPCL had told the committee that the N103 trillion represented cumulative spending carried out by joint venture partners through cash calls since 2017. The committee, however, rejected the explanation, maintaining that the claim failed to provide a clear breakdown of the transactions.

Lawmakers also questioned another N107 trillion recorded as ‘sundry receivables’ in the company’s audited financial statements as of December 2023. According to the NNPCL, the funds are owed to the company by several financial institutions and other entities.

But the committee insisted that the figures must be clearly reconciled, stressing that when both amounts are combined, the total sum requiring explanation rises to N210 trillion.

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“As of December 2023, NNPCL recorded N107 trillion as sundry receivables, which it claimed were owed by some defunct banks and other entities,” he said.

“However, the company was unable to provide a clear breakdown identifying the banks or other entities responsible for these amounts. This is also unacceptable to the committee.”

Wadada said the committee also observed an alleged duplication of subsidy deductions amounting to N3.8 trillion.

$3bn wasted on refineries

The NNPCL under Kyari also spent nearly $3 billion on the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries. Mr Kyari was bent on ensuring that the refineries worked and competed with the then upcoming Dangote Petroleum Refinery.

Despite this humongous spending, the refineries did not produce petrol till he left office in April 2025. They have also not produced petrol today. Several times the NNPCL announced that the refineries would be shut down for maintenance, yet nothing would come out of such rehabiitation after several weeks of waiting.  

However, the new Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mr Bayo Ojulari, recently spilt the beans, disclosing that the nation’s refineries were operating at massive financial losses, prompting his management team to shut them down to stop further waste.

He said in early Fenruary that public anger over the state of the refineries was justified, noting that huge sums of public funds had been invested over the years with the expectation that the plants would reduce Nigeria’s dependence on imported fuel.

“Nigerians were angry, and rightly so. A lot of money had been sunk into the refineries and expectations were very high. So the pressure on us was extreme,” Mr Ojulari said.

The NNPCL boss explained that refining was outside his core professional background, as most of his career had been spent in the upstream segment of the oil industry. However, he said the responsibilities of leadership demanded that he quickly understood the sector and took hard decisions.

“My background is upstream, so I had to learn fast. You are accountable, and if you don’t learn quickly, there is no escape,” he said, noting that an internal assessment of refinery operations revealed that the facilities were destroying value rather than creating it.

READ ALSO: Senate summons former NNPCL chief Kyari over alleged N210trn unexplained expenditure

“What became clear very quickly is that we were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria. We were simply wasting money,” he said.

Although crude oil was being supplied to the plants, he disclosed that refinery utilisation averaged only between 50 percent and 55 percent, while operating expenses, contractor fees and other costs kept rising.

“We were spending heavily on operations and contractors, but when you looked at the final numbers, we were just leaking value,” he added.

According to him, unlike normal investments where early losses can be justified by future gains, there was no visible pathway for recovery in the case of the refineries.

“Sometimes you lose money at the start of an investment, but you can see where recovery will come from. In this case, there was no such line of sight,” he said.