FLASHBACK: How Mele Kyari Called For Forensic Audit Of NNPC Accounts In Show Of Transparency

The Nigerian oil industry has long resisted any scrutiny that could lead to meaningful reform. But Mele Kyari, during his tenure as head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), changed the narrative. He welcomed audits, encouraged performance transparency, and published financial statements of the national oil firm.

On Wednesday, protesters under the banner of Concerned Citizens Against Corruption besieged the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, demanding the probe of Kyari over what they termed years of opaque dealings at the NNPCL.

The group accused the former NNPCL GCEO of mismanaging funds earmarked for the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s moribund refineries and raised concerns about alleged indebtedness to oil trading companies.

Their demonstration comes weeks after President Bola Tinubu replaced Kyari as NNPCL GCEO and dissolved the NNPCL board on April 2, 2025.

However, the protesters may not have recalled that Kyari, long before now, had voluntarily called for an audit of NNPCL’s accounts.

During his last public appearance as NNPCL boss before the National Assembly’s joint committee on Finance in January, Kyari revealed that the NNPCL had remitted N10trn into the federation account, making it the country’s highest taxpayer.

He used the same platform to make an uncommon request when he called for a forensic audit of the company’s expenditures between January and September 2024.

“Until October 1, 2024, NNPCL, as mandated by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), acted as the supplier of last resort for fuel supply,” he told the lawmakers.

“A forensic audit is needed to determine the financial obligations of NNPCL and any owed entities. Our transactional accounts are transparent and published annually, reinforcing our status as the top taxpayer and the highest contributor of royalties and dividends.”

Under Kyari’s leadership, the NNPCL became the only Nigerian company to publish 100 per cent of its financial statements annually. The company consistently emerged as the highest taxpayer in the country. These were symbolic of the transparency campaign spearheaded by Kyari shortly after he took over the company’s leadership in 2019.

That campaign, known as Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence (TAPE), was launched to reform the oil giant long plagued by inefficiency. Under TAPE, Kyari introduced the Monthly Financial and Operations Report (MFOR), which became a regular and public feature, and offered the Nigerian public and the international community unprecedented insights into the activities and performance of the national oil company.

In 2020, for the first time in its history, the NNPCL declared a net profit of N287bn. That performance improved significantly in the following years, with a record profit of N674.1bn reported in 2021. The achievement marked a turnaround for a company that had, for decades, been synonymous with losses and mismanagement.

Kyari also played a key role in the transformation of NNPC into a limited liability company under the Petroleum Industry Act, passed in 2021. The PIA laid the legal groundwork for increased operational efficiency and investment inflows into the oil and gas sector.

Against this background, industry observers have noted the irony of Wednesday’s protests given Kyari’s well-documented commitment to transparency and his calls for a forensic audit of the company.

“I came across some protesters at the Federal Secretariat Abuja, raising placards against the ex NNPCL CEO Kyari. Most of the young guys there don’t actually know what they were protesting about. They just joined. Its clearly a sponsored project by some displeased or disgruntled oil interests against Kyari,” wrote human rights activist and former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani, on Wednesday.

Under Kyari, NNPCL’s commitment to transparency earned commendations from international bodies, including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which recognised the company for its enhanced transparency and accountability standards.

To combat oil theft and pipeline vandalism, Kyari also established the Central Coordination, Data Integration, and Activation Control Room to enhance surveillance of oil and gas assets in the Niger Delta.

FLASHBACK: How Mele Kyari Called For Forensic Audit Of NNPC Accounts In Show Of Transparency is first published on The Whistler Newspaper