Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has said that the controversies and consequencies of the secrecy involved in the award of the $1.3 billion contract for OPL 245 To Malabu Oil and Gas Ltd in 1998 was still haunting the country.

Osinbajo stated this on Tuesday while speaking at a conference on beneficial ownership organized by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He said hidden and secretive corporate ownership systems were responsible for the corrupt incidences like the Malabu scandal which remained a real and present danger to Nigeria and other developing countries.

According to him, although anonymous companies are not always illegal and designed to harm, the secret manner in which they operate provides a convenient cover for corrupt and criminal-minded people.

He said: “Our experience have shown clearly that anonymous corporate ownership could serve as vehicles for masking conflicts of interest, corruption, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorism financing.

“So for us in the developing world and especially in Africa, breaking the wall of secret corporate ownership is an existential matter. It is a matter of life and death. Masked or hidden corporate ownership is deeply implicated in the sad story of our underdevelopment.”

He further stressed that it was rather unfortunate that Nigeria was still grappling with the negative consequences of the use of opacity by senior members of the government and their cronies who between 1993 and 1998 awarded juicy contracts in the extractive industry including the Malabu deal which has been a subject of criminal and civil proceedings.

The OPL 245 was awarded o Malabu Oil and Gas at a time the beneficiaries were Dr. Dan Etete, the then Minister of Petroleum Resources who approved the license, and Mohammed Abacha, the son of the late former head of state at the time, General Sani Abacha.