The House of Representatives says it is investigating the acquisition of OVH Energy Marketing by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL.
Chairman of the House of Reps Committee on Downstream, Petroleum, Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere disclosed this to OsunDailyNG on Monday.
NNPCL had announced in October 2022 that it had acquired OVH Energy Marketing, owner and operator of the Oando downstream assets.
However, a rights group, Nigeria Transparency Council, NTC, approached the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with a petition seeking a thorough probe of the acquisition process.
Confirming the development, Ugochinyere, representing Ideato Federal Constituency, said the House would soon make a statement on the matter.
“We received a petition and are currently studying it; we will make a comment within the shortest possible time,” he told OsunDailyNG.
Meanwhile, in the petition to the Reps, the NTC urged the lawmakers to probe how the NNPCL paid N140b for the acquisition of OVH Energy Downstream Assets.
The petition was signed by NTC’s Secretary General, Dr. Ayo Olubunmi.
He urged the lawmakers to convene a powerful meeting of their committee to look into “the acquisition agreement, assets said to have been bought,” among others.
NTC lamented lack of proper investigation in the previous probe and complained of non-observance of due process in the investigation procedure.
The rights group also claimed that until now, “the NNPCL retail and OVH have not formalised the acquisition agreement thereby raising more suspicion on the real things happening post acquisition.”
It further urged the committee “to investigate all products given to NNPCL retail and OVH and where the payments and revenue went to and investigate the legal business relationship between both entities.”
The group threatened to proceed to court if the committee does not commence public investigation of the acquisition of OVH within the next 10 days.
OsunDailyNG recalls that the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL, Mele Kyari, had in September 2023, absolved the corporation of any wrongdoing in the acquisition.
Kyari, who spoke at the resumed investigative hearing of the Ad-hoc Committee on the acquisition of OVH Energy by NNPCL, said the organisation did nothing wrong in the acquisition as it was purely a business decision that has begun to yield results in less than one year after it was done.
Kyari also said that the company now has over 900 fuel stations spread across the country, while controlling about 30 percent of the market in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.
He added that, “for instance, in 2021, before the acquisition, NNPC Retail made N6.93bn profit. But in one quarter after the acquisition (1st Qtr 2023), we made a profit of N18.4bn. This is all as a result of the acquisition.”
