- A report by Global Witness has revealed how Nigeria was defrauded $6 billion from an oil deal that involved two oil companies, Shell and Eni
- The report also claimed that apart from the oil companies involved, former president Goodluck Jonathan, and a former minister of oil, Dan Etete, were not spared
- Pressure has been mounted on Nigeria to terminate the oil deal with the oil companies currently facing corruption trial in Italian court
A report from a foreign organisation, Global Witness, has revealed another big case of illegal oil deal worth $6 billion and perpetrated in Nigeria under the watch of the past administration, BBC reports.
Legit.ng gathers that the revelation of the illegal oil came to public consciousness following a move by a Milan court to place charges of corruption on Eni and Shell, the two oil companies allegedly involved in the deal in which Nigeria lost billion of dollar to fraud and corruption.
Earlier, Global Witness, a campaign organisation, said it has calculated the OPL 245 deal in 2011 and discovered that Nigeria was deprived double of its annual education and healthcare budget.
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The oil scandal, which is in the court of law, was reported to have involved a formal president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, former MI6 officers, former senior executives at Eni and Shell oil companies. The two companies have, however, denied any wrongdoing in their involvement.
The report also has it that the alleged scandal also involved a former minister of oil in Nigeria, Dan Etete, who is standing trial in a French court for awarding ownership of OPL 245 to a company he secretly controlled, using the illegal oil fund to buy himself speed a boat and chateau.
The court in Milan is weighing evidence of how a former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, also allegedly bribed former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to cover the fraud.
Shedding light on the role of Global Witness in the uncovering, the report also indicated that the group has spent years investigating the oil deal which gave Shell and Eni the rights to explore OPL 245, an offshore oil field in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, which contained billion barrels of oil.
It also noted that Global witness, after its investigative analysis, discovered that Nigeria might have lost, over the lifetime of the project, an amount estimated to be $5.86 billion, what was against the terms and agreement put in place before 2011.
Global Witness concluded that Nigeria has lost big share of what should have been her profit from the deal to the two reputable oil companies.
In a reaction, calls have been coming for Nigeria to terminate the deal, which was described as a sheer act of corruption and betray of trust.
Ava Lee, a campaigner at Global Witness, expressed shocked over the report, wondering why the large percentage of the Nigeria population is impoverished despite the available oil resources.
She said: "We discovered that Shell had constructed a deal that cut Nigeria out of their share of profit oil from the block.
"This amount of money would be enough to educate six million teachers in Nigeria.
"It really can't be underestimated just how big a deal this could be for a country that right now has the highest rates of extreme poverty in the world.
"Looking at the emails, it seems that Shell knew that the deal they were constructing was misleading but they went ahead with it anyway even though a number of Nigerian officials raised concerns about this scandalous, scandalous deal."
One of the campaigners against the deal, Olanrewaju Suraju from HEDA, urged President Buhari to terminate the oil deal.
He said: "President Buhari should reject any deal. The Italian government is discouraging Nigerian migrants trying to reach Italy by claiming that it will help them at home, but Italy's biggest multi-national, part owned by the state, is accused of scamming billions from the Nigerian people."
The case is regarded as one of the biggest corruption cases on global watch.
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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that former president Goodluck Jonathan had told President Buhari to take his fight to the Transparency International (IT), rather than him, following a statement made by the presidency refuting the ex-president's corruption claim.
GEJ's reaction to Garba Shehu's response dated Thursday, November 22, was contained in a long release from his media office and signed by Jonathan's media spokesperson, Reno Omokri.
Legit.ng earlier reported that the former president had boasted in his book, My Transition Hours, that corruption was not as rampant during his administration when compared to the administration. The claim was later refuted by the presidency.
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Source: Legit.ng