Adeola Yusuf 
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday declared that it secured financing agreement for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery by the African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank) as a fruit it reaped from its transparency and accountability.
Though the rehabilitation is to gulp $1.5 billion, the financing deals secured from the Afreximbank, New Telegraph gathered, is $1 billion. Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, said while playing host to the management team of the Nigeria Extractive Industries and Transparency Initiative (NEITI) led by its Executive Secretary, Dr. Orji Ogbonaya Orji, at the NNPC Towers, Abuja. He maintained that the corporation has begun to reap more benefit of its management’s commitment to transparency and accountability with bountiful opportunities of private sector financing for its projects.
The publication of the Corporation’s Audited Financial Statements has significantly improved investors’ confidence in the corporation and was instrumental to the speedy facilitation of the financing agreement for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery by the African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank). He said: “Since we opted to disclose our financial statements, the speed with which we close financial transactions has been monumental.
We now close deals at a quarter of the time we used to do them and that is very critical.” Kyari restated his commitment to work with NEITI and urged the Executive Secretary and members of his management team to avail themselves of details of the Corporation’s operations, especially the monthly engagement with the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), on the NNPC website. Earlier, Orji had described NNPC as a key partner of the agency whose role in the industry stands “clearly on the orbit.”