President-elect Muhammadu Buhari plans to focus on ending corruption and reforming the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) before looking into other reforms in the oil sector, it has emerged.
Four party sources from the All Progressives Congress (APC) told Reuters that the issue of fiscal terms,seen as crucial by the industry, will have to wait on current thinking about oil and gas policies, reports Vanguard.
“We need to address the structural issues and leave the fiscal for now,” Senator Bukola Saraki told Reuters.
“A more transparent Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, is needed with reasonable accounting,” he said.
While Nigerians are eager to see change in the national oil company and the oil sector as a whole where corruption is perceived to be pronounced, some worry that time spent on trying to catch people who stole money may affect the real work expected of the incoming administration.
“The worry is that there’s going to be a lot of time wasted in witch-hunting.
That could take a year in which nothing else will happen,” a Nigerian investment banker focused on upstream oil and gas projects, who declined to be named, said.
Buhari will be inaugurated on May 29 after an official handling over by President Goodluck Jonathan, a day earlier.
One he assumes office, one of the things Nigerians will be watching closely is his stance on corruption, one of the very reasons he won the March 28 election.