The House of Representatives yesterday condemned the planned unbundling of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, as proposed by the Minister of State for Petroleum and Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachukwu, this week without following the constitutional process.
It said instead of embarking on an unconstitutional journey, the President should send an executive bill to the National Assembly as soon as possible if he had the intentions to unbundle NNPC or carry out fundamental restructuring or reforms in the oil and gas sector and not for the Minister to usurp its functions.
The resolutions of the House followed the motion sponsored by Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe representing Ogoja/Yala Federal Constituency of Cross River State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, entitled, “Urgent need to investigate acts of procedural breach by the GMD of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.”
Jarigbe in the motion noted that the minister on Thursday, March 3, 2016, was quoted as saying that for the national oil company, a lot of work was going on, adding, “I am sure some of you have seen the effects, but within the next one week, we are going to be announcing some real major overhaul of the system, one that hasn’t been done in over 20 years.”
The lawmaker also stated that the Minister also added that, “The effect of that will be to quite frankly unbundle the huge company into four to five main operational zones, the upstream, downstream, midstream, refining and of course, every other company that is trending to the venture group.”
Culled from CrossRiverWatch