The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has invited title editors of major Nigerian newspapers to a meeting with a promise to give each of them money to help discredit a recent report on financial mismanagement within the organisation.

The meeting is to be held at Legend Hotel, next to Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, at 1pm on Sunday.

On Friday, the ICIR had reported that the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC), a subsidiary of NNPC, incurred a comprehensive loss of N53.179 billion in 2020 owing to poor financial decisions.

According to the report, PHRC, under Mele Kyari, NNPC Managing Director and chair of the refinery, and Ahmed Dikko, the Managing Director, employed 487staff in 2020 despite zero revenue.

Of the 487 employed, 430 were said to be senior and management staff who pocketed an average of N672,713 each as salary every month.

“It is looking like jobs for the boys at our dear refineries. And, I wonder, most of these guys are earning heavy wages,” Ellam Ogochukwu, a US-based Financial Consultant, told ICIR.

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The company’s staff were reportedly given loans and advances valued at N1.001billion in 202, while the directors took N99.742million as emoluments. Six directors – Malam Mele Kyari; Abba Bukar, Managing Director; Babatunde S. Sofowore, Executive Director of Services; Ganiyu Abiodun Owolabi, Executive Director of Operations; Engr Abel N. Imonighavwe, Executive Director of Operations; and Mrs Aramide M. Ekundayo, Executive Director of Finance and Accounts – were said to have received an average payment of N9.94million a month in 2019.

While the company generated only N6.27billion between 2017 and 2019, ICIR found that it paid its staff up to N80.57billion, implying that within the period, NNPC “sought N74.3billion from outside the refinery to pay staff salaries”.

However, Arewa Legacies Assembly and the Bayelsa Patriots for New Nigeria – two groups understood to have been paid by the corporation – said the report was a move to distract Kyari and Dikko from championing reforms at NNPC.

In a statement made public on Saturday, the coalition said “haters of the ongoing reforms at the NNPC are going beyond the boundaries of decency.”

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“As Nigerian citizens, we feel duty-bound to draw public attention to a calculated, coordinated and well-funded media agenda designed to purposely distract the NNPC management, including another committed public servant – Dikko – who has been leading the reforms at the level of Port Harcourt Refinery,” the statement reads in part.

“We have been following what is obviously a well-funded media distraction against the no-nonsense NNPC GMD and his loyal lieutenants like Dikko of Port Harcourt Refinery and we are confident this mischievous plot would be dead on arrival.

“Even though we are also doubly sure that the current GMD of NNPC and his team are so occupied with efforts to give the corporation their best shot and won’t even have the time to respond to fake figures being bandied against the NNPC, we as volunteers won’t fold our arms.”

FIJ understands that a meeting between NNPC and newspaper editors is no new development, in fact a monthly engagement. However, it often holds towards the end of the month. The one being held today has been convened because of ICIR’s damning story, and comes as the next in NNPC’s series of lobbying against the platform since the story was published on Friday.