The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has refuted a newspaper report (not National Daily) that its officials were interrogated in a probe.
“The attention of the Management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been drawn to a story published on the front page of 7th June edition of Thisday titled, “Oil Traders, NNPC Officials Interrogated, Watch-listed in Major Investigation”, in which mischievous falsehoods were concocted to spruce up an otherwise baseless story to deliberately misinform the public and cast the Corporation in unflattering colours”.
The corporation is not happy with the second paragraph of the story, which states that: “The probe, which started at EFCC is also being looked at by the DSS in the last two weeks, has led to the interrogation, arrest, watch-listing and seizure of international passports of some NNPC officials and oil trading firms by the DSS,” creating the impression that NNPC officials and indeed the Corporation may have been indicted for some criminal act or wrongdoing.
The story listed the NNPC officials involved to include the Managing Director of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), Mr. Anthony Muoneke; Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division, Mr. Gbenga Komolafe; and Executive Director (Commercial), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Mr. Frank Amego.
But the NNPC states in most unequivocal terms that the NNPC officials named in the said publication are scheduled and delegated Management Staff of the Corporation who only carried out their legitimate official assignments within the NNPC and were only invited to shed light on same by the law enforcement agencies, that the invitation of the officials is nothing unusual as NNPC regularly interfaces with other government agencies to provide information on relevant activities of the Corporation.
The corporation also states that none of the NNPC officials was arrested nor detained by the EFCC or the DSS in connection with investigation into the crude swap programme and the Offshore Processing Agreements, and that none of the NNPC officials has had his international passport seized by any of the law enforcement agencies mentioned in connection with the investigation.
Ohi Alegbe, Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division called on all media houses and media practitioners to always verify their facts in keeping with the tenets of the journalism profession before going public with them.