he Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is in the news again. NNPC is Nigeria's state-run oil company. It manages to be in the news for all the wrong reasons and employ news mongers to deflect truth, pervert the obvious and mislead the citizenry. The last time NNPC was in the news it was about its accounts and finances. While then minister of state for finance, Mr. Aderemi Babalola, said the NNPC is broke and has become a deadbeat national oil company and a liability to the nation, the chief corporate media monger of NNPC and gifted misinformer practically misled the nation by twisting and denying the truth, insisting the national oil company is very liquid. But we knew NNPC has a huge debt profile, hidden and suspect financial records, and obviously unable to meet its financial obligations. However, with time the media monger's propaganda was exposed and the truth prevailed.

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Now Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) and Transparency International (TI), an international watch dog dedicated to openness in public life and transparency in all aspects of national and international relationships, have teamed up to conduct a review/study of 44 national oil and gas companies (NOCs) in the world. TI just recently presented the report, which is available on its website. The report 'Promoting Revenue Transparency - 2011 Report on Oil and Gas Companies' was made available to the media this week. It was rightly sub-titled 'Stolen Assets: Time to Act Now'. The report found that NNPC is the most corrupt national oil and gas company among its peers in the world. NNPC recorded 0% in reporting on anti-corruption programs and another 0% in organizational disclosure. Some Nigerian newspapers have mistakenly reported 8% for NNPC in organizational disclosure, one of the two key criteria for evaluating national oil companies (NOCs) by Transparency International. The purpose of TI's Promoting Revenue Transparency project is to make "extractive industries' revenues of most benefit to society by increasing transparency and accountability of extractive industry revenues." Unfortunately these noble goals of TI are passionately hated and loathed by the politicians who misrule Nigeria and the managers and executives who mismanage and loot the revenues of NNPC. NNPC used to be the piggy bank of Ibrahim Babangida. He actually started the crude and dirty habit of dipping hands directly into the coffers of the state oil company, and he was soon followed by the dare devil cretin, Sani Abacha.

TI was hoping the three objectives of the project will "add value to existing revenue transparency initiatives" and help to set the poor masses of resource rich nations free from poverty, dependency on foreign aids, disease and hunger. TI noted in its initial 2008 report on oil and gas companies as follows: "Oil, gas and minerals, or the extractive industries generate great wealth. Oil export revenues for 2006 alone are estimated to make up approximately 1.8 percent of the World's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and more than half of the combined GDP of the 53 lowest income nations." The ultimate goal, therefore, was to insist "on transparent governance" in order to "transform the resource curse into blessing" through the creation of "greater public knowledge of the scale of extractive industry revenues, how these (revenues) flow from oil producers to governments, as well as greater understanding of the oversight systems that are in place," which, it is hoped, will "potentially place pressures on governments to use these revenues in the public interest" and to "support economic growth and poverty reduction." If a hugely corrupt national oil and gas company like NNPC is forced to properly implement and imbibe the revenue transparency program of TI the benefits to Nigerians will be unimaginable. Diversion and stealing of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues will be a thing of the past and social services, education and training, support for senior citizens and health care will improve substantially.

Transparency International's revenue transparency project is focused on three areas of national oil and gas company action that will "contribute to improved accountability for extractive revenues. By ensuring that NNPC is compelled by law to make full public disclosure of payments and taxes received from the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Chevron, Agip, Texaco-Phillip, Mobil and other multinational oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria will fix the loopholes through which oil revenues are diverted and stolen. For as long as all financial information relating to the operations of the joint ventures are in the public domain the public will get a clear picture of the volume of business NNPC is engaged in and what the joint venture is doing and paying to NNPC. It will also help make the multinational oil companies less beholding to the rogue civil servants and hugely corrupt political leaders in Nigeria. NNPC has no audited account and has not been audited in several years. NNPC is not listed on the stock exchange like many other national oil companies who are doing far better than their peers who are unlisted. The unlisted national oil companies like NNPC are by far poorly managed and highly unreported with their financial information either unavailable, unreliable where such financial information are available, or questionable at best.

The disclosure of revenue through public reporting of all benefits, according to TI, will "help citizens hold their governments to account for the terms on which resources were exchanged for revenues, and for the use of those revenues in budgets and expenditures." Since we live in a society where corruption is endemic and acceptable (even as convicted felons are given rock star reception on their release from jail!), there is every reason for citizens to have full knowledge of revenues and the volume of resources that are being exchanged for payments received from multinational oil companies. NNPC has been run largely in secret by the gangs that control it. Oil and gas has always been referred to as the nation's "resource curse," products that generate untold wealth yet yielded unimaginable poverty for the masses of our people. But the oil curse can truly become oil wealth for the generality of our people with more openness and transparency introduced into the equation.

In the 2008 Report on Revenue Transparency of Oil and Gas Companies, TI identified three tiers of revenue transparency disclosure among international and national oil and gas companies. The tiers are high, middle and low. NNPC was ranked in the middle tier. As a middle tier NOC performer NNPC's issues and problems included the following: 1. its disclosure is "relatively little about payments and anti-corruption programs." 2. It required increased reporting on policy and management systems as well as improved reporting on all areas of revenue transparency, particularly for non-listed companies. But NNPC has moved from the middle tier to being the worst opened and transparent national oil and gas Company in the world. Of the 44 national oil and gas companies considered only the NNPC had a score of 0% in the two categories. It is very glaring that NNPC is not interested in public disclosure and least bothered by transparency. Transparency will prevent looting and stealing, so who at the NNPC wants to divulge information about national business activities of which he wants to personally loot and profit from? NNPC is not ready and it does not consider itself willing and prepared to help stop corruption in its own oil and gas operations.

While the average score among the NOCs for organizational disclosure was 65%, Nigeria's NNPC scored 0%! With an average score of 43% in the area of reporting on anti-corruption programs by the 44 national oil and gas companies NNPC again scored 0%. You do not expect a pro-corruption and greedy political leaders and rogue NNPC executives to be happy to release information; the more shrouded in secret and mystery, the better for the thieves. How can Nigerians live with a terribly unaccountable and transparency-loathing national oil and gas company with responsibility for managing more than two and half million barrels of crude oil exploration a day? Despite efforts to obtain the gas production numbers through searches and other efforts I got nothing, absolutely nothing about how much gas Nigeria is selling and the revenue there from. What is the liquefied gas production of Nigeria? These are figures and financial transactions they do not want us to know anything about. This is the lack of openness we are talking about; the preference for keeping the citizenry in the dark about revenues and national resources. One of the subsidiaries of NNPC, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) has been spending hundreds of millions of naira every year on partitioning in the last four years. DPR has spent 1.112 billion naira on partitioning over a period of four years. You wonder what DPR is busy partitioning. Is it possible DPR has been busy partitioning Nigeria as such need this much to do the job?

Even in 2008 NNPC was ranked low in the area of payments. It was ranked middle in operations, which is essentially because the joint venture partners such as SPDC and Chevron provided some documentation of their joint venture operations with NNPC. For anti-corruption programs, NNPC was ranked low. It was also ranked low in regulatory and procurement issues. Procurement! That is the forte of the rogue executives and managers at NNPC. NNPC managers and executives are forever procuring, buying, buying, and buying everything under the sun. How many of us have ever seen the profit and loss and statement of accounts of NNPC? How about interim report like the banks used to publish in Nigerian newspapers before Lamido Sanusi came to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and restored some sanity? The Nigerian people do not know anything about the finances, operations, revenues, assets and liabilities of NNPC. I guess it is none of the people's business. When did the people's business become none of their business? NNPC account statements, profits and losses, assets and investments should be in the public domain; they belong squarely in the public domain being the property of the citizenry. This vital information that represents more than 90% of the nation's revenue and account largely for the nation's wealth should be available to the Nigerian public, should be on the Internet, and that is one battle we need to fight to clamp down on corruption and get the revenues and profits from oil to the people. As a people we need to hold public office holders responsible and accountable for all their actions and inactions; we need to know the revenues received and for what, we need to demand full details of the business activities of NNPC and its subsidiaries.

We know the rogues who mismanage NNPC and the crooked and irresponsible political leaders NNPC report to will rather keep the details of NNPC's activities away from the 'prying' eyes of the masses. Most of the managers and executives at NNPC are super rich lowlifes who own properties all over the nation and abroad, but not by their sweat and hard work, only by their dubious acts of criminality and stealing. These managers and executives own more properties and estates than executives of the multinational oil and gas companies like Shell and Chevron even when NNPC officials earn a fraction of what Shell and Chevron pay their staff. You wonder how a staff at NNPC is able to sustain a family overseas and maintain children in universities abroad where school fees are in the region of $20,000 a year. NNPC contracts are never open and tenders are unknown. Most staff members of NNPC are also contractors to the same NNPC; managers and executives at NNPC obtain contracts directly or indirectly through spouses, children and fronts. They award contracts to themselves and to one another. Transparency is never going to gain ground in a heavily corrupt environment like NNPC. Accounting, financial, procurement and management principles are not likely to gain acceptability among men and women who have successfully prevented and hindered the smooth operation of four national refineries in more than 20 years and forced the nation to import refined petrol and gasoline. The Nigerian government is subsidizing the importation of petrol by more than N100 per litre (from what the nation has been told) while the petroleum marketing companies are making huge profits. The oil refineries are now bottomless pits that suck down hundreds of millions of dollars in turnaround maintenance costs. Is it not clear why we need to demand more transparency and openness from NNPC and insist on a full and comprehensive audit of NNPC now?