The most troubling exposure presented by NIPACC before security agencies and the presidency, was the deliberate subversion and concealment of lucrative producing oil and gas assets, particularly OMLs 119, 129, 113, and 31, as well as OPLs 2005 and 2006.
“These assets, which are known to be producing crude oil and gas, were officially misrepresented by the NUPRC under Engr. Komolafe as non-existent or non-producing, based on reasons that were neither technically sound nor economically defensible.
By this singular act of concealment and misclassification, the Nigerian State was denied estimated revenues in excess of US$20 billion, encompassing crude oil sales, gas monetization, royalties, taxes, and other statutory payments.
This was not a mere regulatory oversight; it was a calculated distortion of facts that fundamentally compromised the Federation’s revenue base and violated the trust reposed in the NUPRC as a custodian of national petroleum assets.
“Your Excellency, another grave issue uncovered relates to Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 227, which officially covers an area of 974 square kilometres. Records and official correspondence authored under Engr. Komolafe repeatedly claimed that OPL 227 had been converted to Oil Mining Lease (OML) 146, allegedly covering a drastically reduced area of 29.95 square kilometres.
“Under the tenure of Engr. Komolafe, these leases were unlawfully reduced to 2,493.62 square kilometres, leaving 246.38 square kilometres concealed and unaccounted for.
Independent assessments indicate that this concealed acreage alone could have been sold for over US$5 billion, while associated crude oil and gas production from the area could have generated revenues estimated in excess of US$10 billion for the Federation.
“This deliberate underreporting resulted in massive revenue leakages and falsified national production data. Even more alarming were findings that SEEPCO operates over 5,000 bank accounts across various Nigerian banks, allegedly to facilitate the laundering of proceeds from illegitimate oil and gas operations.
Such a scale of financial opacity could not have thrived without regulatory complicity or willful negligence”. The coalition also alleged that Komolafe owned and operated 33 bank accounts, many of which were linked to his Bank Verification Number (BVN), and failed to declare these assets in his Code of Conduct forms.
