Opaque debts owed commercial partners by NNPC.

The NNPC’s debts to its eight joint ventures have “ballooned over the years,” according to a ruling All Progressives Congress policy report submitted to Buhari after the election and obtained by Bloomberg.

In 2012, the state company paid $6.9 billion of the $10.4 billion it owed. The difference was covered by loans from international oil companies including Shell, Exxon Mobil and Total. The companies declined to comment.

Critics say any shakeup would have to resolve NNPC’s dual role as regulator and oil company.

“Corruption would vanish if Buhari refocused the NNPC as just a regulator so people like us can get on with the job,” said Kola Karim, head of a Nigerian oil explorer.

Producing about 60,000 barrels a day, Karim’s Shoreline Group, founded in 1997, could be pumping more than double that amount if the NNPC wasn’t a partner in his business and with civil servants slowing investment decisions, he said.

Senior officials in Buhari’s party are calling for even more drastic measures.

“We should replace the NNPC,” Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of northern Kaduna state, said in Abuja this month. Nigeria needs to “tackle the monster that the NNPC has become.”