The Role of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in Economic Development and Security Challenges in Nigeria

The study examined the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation role in economic development and security challenges in Nigeria. From the study, we realized that NNPC which is federal government oil corporation through which the federal government regulate and monitor the oil and gas industry has achieved some reasonable feet in the sector, but at the same time, marred with some challenges such as assets integrity issues, crude oil and product theft; sub-commercial contracts; low capacity utilization of refineries; issues of subsidy management and inefficient business model. On the side of security, it has continued to be reoccurring problem over the years mostly in the Niger-Delta region and North-East Nigeria where militants and terrorists reside respectively and as a result of that, it has always affected the performance of NNPC towards contributing meaningfully to the economic development of the country over time. The following recommendations were made: there is need for the federal government and other stakeholders in the industry to always re-orient the public and at the same time engage the youths massively and in area of intelligence gathering. There is need for the NNPC to implement audit report recommendations by Price Water House Coopers (PWC) (January 2012- July 2013) and Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) audit report (2013) released 2016 for improvement of NNPC economic activities.

Keywords: NNPC, Economic, Development, Security and Nigeria