The Federal Government, States and local governments areas are yet to agree on the shareholding structure of the newly created public oil companies.
Findings show that states and councils are not accommodated in the share structures of the oil firms formed to replace the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
The new companies are the Nigerian Petroleum Assets Management Company Limited and the National Petroleum Company (NPC).
The ownership structures of the two companies show that the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) will have 20 percent stake; Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), 40 percent and Ministry of Petroleum Incorporated (MOPI), 40 percent.
MOPI, established in 2023 under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), plays a key role in managing Federal Government’s shares and overseeing oil and gas assets.
Officials knowledgeable about the development are already querying the fact that there are also no plans to allocate shares of the new companies to the states and the local governments in the near future.
One of the officials pointed out that historically, shares of federation assets are usually allocated to subnational entities in federated structures.
The official said: “The exclusion of the subnational governments, whether deliberate or not, is not right. It must be corrected as quickly as possible to stave off a disagreement between the states and local councils on the one hand and the Federal Government. Those who packaged the new companies must understand that national assets in a federation belong to all tiers of government.
I, therefore see no reason for all the shares in the new companies to be allocated to Federal Government-owned entities.
“I am worried that the development could threaten the PIA, a legislation hailed as a panacea for the ailing oil sector.”
