Bordered to the west, east and north by Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, Prodigal Land sits southwardly on the banks of the Atlantic Ocean, thrashing its dirty feet in saltwater. There are four gigantic dairy farms spread across Prodigal Land. One is in Kaduna, one is in Warri, and two are in Port Harcourt. On each farm are the aristocrats of dairy products, the Holstein-Friesian cattle.
Now, the Holstein-Friesian cattle are not the gaunt and dirty type you see Musa shepherding with a stick in one hand and an AK-47 slung across his shoulder, causing dread among commuters, and baptising highways with dung and urine. The Holstein-Friesian cow is the literal cash cow – behemoth and potent, engineered for abundance. Weighing as much as 770kg, Holstein-Friesians are the world’s superior dairy breed, renowned for their matchless milk production, unrivalled meat quality and inimitable fat value. The breed not only dominates beef production in the US, Europe and beyond, but its milk production figures are also staggering, yielding 2,900 gallons per lactation cycle, says Encyclopedia Britannica.
Holstein-Friesians are not roamed in madness like their counterparts in Prodigal Land. They are ranched with order, science and discipline, in line with animal protection rights. Native to the Netherlands for over 2,000 years, the stock is the crossbreed between the black cattle of the Batavians and the white cattle of the Frisians, evolving into the large black-and-white breed that has become the face of quality dairy products globally. Found in more than 160 of the 195 countries in the world, Holstein-Friesians are known for their mild temperament, with the mature cow standing at five feet tall at the shoulder.
The registered trademark of the four dairy farms is NNPC, an acronym for Nigerian National Plundering Corporation. The NNPC cattle are not milked by farmers; they are milked by men in agbada, foreign suits and military khaki. At will, militants break into the barn to loot unrefined milk. The milk of prodigal Land is not bottled for the commonwealth; it vanishes through troughs into personal throats. Yes, the udder is national, but the buckets are private. The NNPC, a cesspit of corruption.
A nation flowing with milk and honey, Prodigal Land, with four public refineries in Warri, Kaduna and Port Harcourt, drank each refinery to death, from 1999 to date. After all the Holstein-Friesian cattle in the four refineries were milked to death, NNPC officials, acting on the orders of elected and selected government officials, mummified the cattle and imported barrels of milk from foreign lands, which they forced down the throats of the lifeless cattle, deceiving the citizenry, singing refinery-redemption song.
For years, Warri, Kaduna and Port Harcourt corporations produced no milk, yet staff were retained and paid for doing nothing. Monies amounting to trillions were awarded for turnaround maintenance, purchase, audit, training, development, research and overseas trips. It was so during the Olusegun Obasanjo years, through the Shehu Yar’Adua years, to the Goodluck Jonathan era and the Muhammadu Buhari time. No ignominy better confirms the EFCC as a lame duck anti-corruption agency than its blind eye to the looting jungle the NNPC had become over the years. The EFCC and the ICPC run after petty-thieving Yahoo Boys, but overlook the deities of corruption in NNPC. NNPC plunders; EFCC slumbers.
It is not for swagger’s sake that the talking drummer walks into the village square sideways. It is because he must showcase the animal hide on the drum that he beats, which sounds human. Now, I’ll drop the talking drum, I’ll drop the stick, and speak in a distinct voice like a griot, direct and intentional. I’ll enter the village square directly, unmasked. The Egúngún will unmask, and the ‘Ara Orun Kenke’ heavenly ancestor will speak without metaphors and similes. I’ll enter the grove bare skin.
As I was writing this NNPC article, a story filtered into my phone. I clicked the link, and dropped my jaw: “US jails ex-NNPC GM over $2.1m bribe.” It is no coincidence when bees swarm a flowering plant; it is a manifestation of a natural pattern. Sugar is natural to bees. Corruption is natural to the NNPC.
In the story, a US federal court in California sentenced Paulinus Iheanacho Okoronkwo, a former general manager at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, to seven years and three months in jail for bribery. Okoronkwo, a Nigerian-American with a legal firm in Los Angeles, was found guilty of receiving $2.1m disguised as consultancy fees, but which was a bribe paid to secure more favourable oil drilling rights in Nigeria.
District Judge John Walter ordered Okoronkwo to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and the forfeiture of $1,039,997, being the net proceeds from the sale of a residential property he owned.
Without standing in the witness box for Okoronkwo, I daresay the $2.1m the American court found him guilty of receiving is just a spittle compared to the ocean of corruption the NNPC swims in. Think about it, if $2.1m could be a consultation fee, how much is the contract gangan? It is impossible to count all the teeth in the mouth of Adepele, the fellow who suffers from hyperdontia, the overcrowding of the mouth with teeth. NNPC, the temple of corruption.
Writing in his back-page column in The PUNCH, Professor of Economics, Sheriffdeen Tella, decries the wanton corruption in the NNPC, saying it is high time the haemorrhage was stopped. In his article, “On cash crunch and executive order on NNPCL accounts,” published on February 23, 2026, Tella faults oil unions, particularly the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, which protested President Bola Tinubu’s tampering with the Petroleum Industry Act, but failed to protest the long years of corruption in the NNPC.
Tella says, “The union, particularly the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, protested the President’s action of tampering with financial arrangements or the PIA itself. They have been part of the beneficiaries of the free money. For many years, the refineries have not been working, but they were getting their wages and salaries as due. They did not protest that the refineries were not working, and that something should be done.”
Sakara music sensation, the late Alhaji Yusuf Olatunji, in one of his evergreens, lampoons terrible people mistaken for angels, singing, “Won n pe won leni ire, awon eyan yepere…” Various Nigerian leaders, who have seen to the lootocracy at the NNPC, are eyan yepere, common criminals who should be nailed to the cross. Nigerians know them. The EFCC knows them.
However, my former colleague, Ademola Oni, in his article, “Are we fighting or empowering corruption?” published in THE PUNCH, on February 24, 2026, asserts that the EFCC and the ICPC had been deliberately denied funds by successive governments to hire lawyers for the prosecution of corruption cases.
Shedding more light on the phone, Oni said the revelation came up during a budget defence by the EFCC at the National Assembly, stressing that authorities of the ICPC, in the same breath, also complained of being starved of funds for prosecution. Oni wondered why anyone should wonder why the EFCC and the ICPC are toothless bulldogs. But Oni did not absolve both anti-corruption agencies of being truthful with the little talents they were given. Both the EFCC and the ICPC clearly buried their talents.
I can hear Yusuf Olatunji clearly again. He was talking about the same “Crazy Baldheads” Bob Marley talked about, too. Marley said the crazy baldheads should be chased out of town. Someone at the NNPC is sounding like Olatunji and Marley, calling for a change of the old order, calling for the crazy baldheads to be chased out of town. He is NNPC’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Ojulari.
Ojulari, during the recent Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja, said Nigeria’s four refineries had run at a “monumental loss” for many years, adding that efforts to revamp them had been futile.
He said, “I want to say this very clearly…that we were running at a monumental loss to Nigeria. We were just wasting money. I can say that confidently now.” What Ojulari refers to as monumental loss is the N13.2 trillion financial deficit drilled by just one year of corruption and inaction at the NNPC.
“Stop the bleeding: Sell NNPC refineries” was the title of an editorial published by THE PUNCH on February 16, 2026. It says, “Between 2023 and 2024, about N13.2 trillion was injected into the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries, ostensibly for turnaround maintenance, operations, staffing, security and bank charges.
“In 2024, the NNPC, under Mele Kyari, deceived the public into believing that the refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri had started working. Even the President, Bola Tinubu, joined in the ruse by issuing a signed statement congratulating the weakened behemoth on the milestone. It was grand trickery.
“Despite not producing anything, the moribund refineries spend about N127–N137 billion annually on salaries and employee benefits for roughly 1,600–1,700 staff between 2020 and 2024. This is a high price to pay for failure. Instead of becoming productive assets, the plants deepened their dependence on the NNPC balance sheet. Their combined obligations to NNPC ballooned from N4.52 trillion in 2023 to N8.67 trillion by the end of 2024. No receivables. No offsetting revenues. Just debt compounding debt. Allowing this to continue is patently irrational.
“The Port Harcourt Refinery alone gulped over N2.2 trillion in one year, rising to N4.22 trillion in obligations. Warri and Kaduna followed the same ruinous pattern. Even when crude was supplied “every month,” utilisation hovered around 50–55 per cent, destroying rather than creating value. Nigeria was, in Ojulari’s words, “leaking away value. From the abortive 1998 and 2000 exercises to the $1.5 billion Port Harcourt rehabilitation approved in 2021, the script never changed: award EPC contracts, pay contractors, inaugurate the plant with fanfare, then watch it collapse into silence weeks or months later.”
THE PUNCH editorial stated that billionaire businessman Aliko Dangote described the various attempts to revamp the refineries as forcing new auto parts into a 40-year-old car and expecting Formula One Performance.
“Ojulari, ore o denu” is a Yoruba proverb. It means that in friendship, what the eyes say is different from what sits at the bottom of the stomach. During the Obasanjo-Atiku era, public utilities were sold off as ‘gbanjo’ to cronies. Ojulari, NNPC’s Group Chief Executive Officer, I hope Nigerians can take you by your word. I hope the refineries are not waiting to be sold off to the looters of our treasury in an ‘Ojulari, ore o dekun’ fashion. I hope Nigerians can now believe the end has come for the NNPC at last. I hope.
Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
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