NNPC SPENT ₦5 BILLION JUST TO CHANGE ITS NAME in the middle of ₦210 trillion accountability mess

NNPC SPENT ₦5 BILLION JUST TO CHANGE ITS NAME — AND THAT’S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART. If you thought you had heard everything about how Nigeria’s oil money disappears into thin air, sit down. Because the Senate just cracked open a can of worms so big, even the most cynical Nigerians are shaking their heads.

A Senate Committee has put Mele Kyari and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited — formerly known as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, a name change that apparently cost Nigerian taxpayers a jaw-dropping ₦5 billion — on the hot seat over a staggering ₦210 trillion accountability mess. Let that number breathe for a moment. ₦210 trillion. Not billion. Trillion.But before we even get to the ₦210 trillion, let us talk about this ₦5 billion name change, because that alone deserves its own national conversation.Five. Billion. Naira. To swap Corporation for Company Limited on the letterhead.That is ₦5,000,000,000 of public money spent on rebranding. New logos. New signage.

New stationery. New everything — all to tell the world that NNPC had become NNPCL, a commercialised entity under the Petroleum Industry Act. Meanwhile, Nigerian doctors are going on strike over unpaid salaries. Students are crammed into classrooms with broken furniture. Roads in the Niger Delta — the very region producing the oil that funds all this luxury rebranding — look like war zones.The audacity is breathtaking.And now the Senate wants to know where ₦210 trillion went. That figure represents revenues, transactions, and financial flows that the National Assembly says have not been properly accounted for. Kyari, the Group CEO who has long styled himself as a reformer and moderniser of Nigeria’s oil sector, is now in the hottest seat in Abuja. The committee is demanding answers that, based on everything Nigerians have seen from NNPC over the decades, may be very difficult to produce.Here is the painful irony. The whole point of converting NNPC to NNPCL under the PIA was transparency. Commercialisation.

Accountability. Running Nigeria’s national oil company like an actual business rather than a political slush fund. That was the promise sold to Nigerians. And yet here we are — with ₦5 billion blown on a name change and ₦210 trillion sitting somewhere in the fog of unaccountability.Nigerians have a word for this kind of thing. Dem don do us again.Mele Kyari built a reputation as one of the more polished and media-savvy chiefs in NNPC’s history. Press conferences. Twitter updates. Promises of reform. But polish and accountability are two very different things, and the Senate Committee appears to be in no mood to be dazzled by presentations and corporate speak.The drama is just beginning. And with Nigeria’s 2025 budget under severe pressure, the naira still struggling, and ordinary Nigerians suffocating under the weight of fuel prices and inflation, the timing of these revelations could not be more explosive.The Senate needs to chase this one to the very end. No settlement behind closed doors. No committee report that quietly gathers dust. Nigerians deserve to know where their ₦210 trillion went — and who authorised spending ₦5 billion just to change a name.