A former presidential aide, Mr Reno Omokri, has said it was erroneous to blame President Bola Tinubu for business decisions made by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL. He said despite the federal government’s ownership of the national oil company, its board of directors was responsible for its management and must be held accountable for all its decisions made in accordance with its obligation to run the business profitably. “It betrays a lack of understanding of corporate governance and ignorance of how government operates when politicians and activists attack President Bola Tinubu over the NNPCL’s statements and actions,” Omokri, who was former President Goodluck Jonathan’s special assistant on New Media, said in a statement yesterday. President Tinubu has come under attack over the recent petrol price hikes by the NNPCL from N580/N617 to N850/N893 per litre, which triggered angry reactions from a cross-section of the public. Many social commentators and policy analysts held the president responsible for the hike because they believed that the national oil company, wholly owned by the federal government, could not tinker with its products’ prices without the president’s assent. However, Omokri thinks differently, contending that the company that decided for its business survival must be held accountable. “The NNPCL, though state-owned, is a limited liability company that is not subject to the Appropriation Act or the Fiscal Responsibility Act in the way ministries, departments, and agencies are,” he said.
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