The EFCC has made a major arrest in what could be one of Nigeria’s biggest oil sector fraud scandals.
A former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Umar Isa, is now in custody over an alleged $7.2 billion fraud tied to the failed turnaround maintenance of Nigeria’s key refineries in Kaduna, Warri, and Port Harcourt.
Also arrested is Jimoh Olasunkanmi, ex-MD of the Warri Refinery, with several other top former officials under investigation for abuse of office, diversion of funds, and collecting kickbacks from contractors.
As CFO, Isa oversaw the release of funds for the so-called refinery rehabilitation project—yet years and trillions of naira later, the refineries remain non-functional.
This comes just days after the Senate Committee on Public Accounts raised concerns about major discrepancies in the NNPC’s audited accounts from 2017 to 2023, describing them as “mind-boggling.”
The EFCC’s investigation could finally pull back the curtain on the decades-long rot within Nigeria’s oil sector—a sector long plagued by corruption, opacity, and waste.