The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited made a profit of N18.4bn in the first quarter of 2023 less than a year after acquiring OVH Energy.

The NNPCL’s Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, stated this in Abuja, at the resumed investigative hearing of the ad-hoc committee of the House of Representatives on Friday.

According to him, “Five years backward, the NNPC Retails Limited’s highest profit came in 2021 at N6.59bn. But in the first quarter of 2023, after the acquisition of OVH, we made a profit of N18.4bn. It is nothing because we have expanded. We have more footprint, better brand and greater capacity in terms of our market share.

“We started NNPC Retail Limited in the year 2000 and until the period of acquiring the OVH chain, we were not able to grow organically. We only had 48 stations that we owned and a mirage of companies that are affiliates all over the country, some of which were not functional fuel stations. They could not serve the purpose because there were dealers who could not pay for the cost of the products and we had locations where we could not guarantee either the quantity or quality of the products sold.”

He added, “We failed to grow organically for 23 years. The only way to bridge that gap is to do something strategic and this is very difficult in our industry. You have to acquire other people’s assets if you want to grow to achieve the objective of the PIA and grow this company to the business we want it to be.”

According to Kyari, the corporation had been a loss making one for many years. With the transformation that came into the company before the PIA and after the PIA, he said, the company was now a net profit company declaring profit for its shareholders.

He said, “We saw the opportunity to acquire this asset and add to our portfolio so that we can meet the requirements of the law.  Right now, we are in control of 30 per cent of the market downstream by this acquisition. No company will come to the public to announce that.”