President Muhammadu Buhari has dissolved the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

In a statement signed by Haruna Imrana, Director of Communications for the Head of Service of the Federation, President Buhari said, "The dissolving of the board is with immediate effect,”

According to the statement, the directive to that effect was conveyed in a letter signed on Friday, June 26 by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Danladi Kifasi.

In the letter, President Buhari also expressed gratitude to members of the dissolved board for their services to the nation.

In recent times, a lot of allegations of corrupt practices have been made on the NNPC board. In December 2011, the Nigerian government permitted a forensic report conducted by KPMG to be published.

The audit, commissioned by the Ministry of Finance following concerns over the NNPC’s transparency, detailed the NNPC’s sharp business practices, violation of regulations, illegal deductions of funds belonging to the state, and failure to account for several billions of naira that should go to the federation account.

Another case is that of Willbros Group Inc, a US company, on May 2008, admitted to making corrupt payments totalling over $6.3 million to officials at the NNPC and its subsidiary NAPIMS, in return for assistance in obtaining and retaining contracts for work on the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS)

Also there is the case of unremitted fund. On 9 December 2013, a letter from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor to the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, dated 25 September 2013 showing details that the NNPC had not remitted over $49.8 billion proceeds of crude oil sales to the government surfaced.

Investigations later showed that out of the unremitted $49.8 billion, $20 billion was actually embezzled. No staff of the NNPC or Ministry of Petroleum has so far been punished, though on Thursday, 20 February 2014, the whistle-blowing CBN governor was suspended from office by the president.