The House of Representatives yesterday accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of deliberately slowing down the investigation into its remittance of revenues to the Federal Government.
House Committee on Finance, which has been probing Federal Government’s revenue generating agencies, has been at loggerheads with NNPC over refusal by the latter to obey summons. NNPC made N6 trillion between 2009 and 2012 as IGR but allegedly refused to remit N142 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) as demanded by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) 2007.
In March, the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, and heads of the organisation’s subsidiaries, appeared before the committee, headed by Hon Abdulmumuni Jibrin.
They have, however, shunned subsequent invitation, resulting to recurring spars between officials of the agency and the lawmakers. But yesterday, four senior officials of NNPC, led by the Group Executive Director (Finance), Bernard Otti, who stood in for the GMD, was at the meeting with the committee.
Lambasting the agency for not cooperating with the committee to conclude the investigation on its remittances, Chairman of the Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin described as unfortunate the decision of the oil giant to adopt a time-wasting tactics .
He said delay tactics has slowed down the conclusion if the probe, a situation he said was different from other agencies. Jibrin said: “This exercise is not about the NNPC but the subsidiaries that are generating the revenue and have been making profit.
Out of the 17 subsidiaries, it is only five that has not been making profit and we want to know how the profit of the others are being spent since NNPC has been saying that it has never operated on surplus.” He stressed: “Unfortunately this delay is affecting the submission of the report of this investigation, we investigated 60 agencies and all of the them have responded, it is only NNPC that is remaining.”
“It is the opinion of this Committee that the wrong impression the NNPC is having is that they forgot that the Committee is constitutionally empowered to request for documents to aid its investigation from any entity considered necessary. “We can decided to request for information even from a unit within the NNPC and they must oblige as stipulated by the constitution”.
Besides, Jibrin opined that the subsidiaries ought to be given the opportunity to make their own case since many of them have been making profit while the parent body has been presenting contrary reports for years. “Nigerians even need to know the workings of the NNPC and all we are doing is to see how we can assist the corporation in blocking all leakages so that the revenue base of the government can be lifted”.
A member of the committee Pally Iriase regretted that the NNPC has been taking the Committee for a ride . He contended that the corporation has shown no sign of cooperating with the Committee with its attitude of stalling the investigation by always asking for more time every time. GMD (Finance) had earlier apologized to the Committee that the delay in coming up with the presentation was as a result of the absence of the officer in charge, whom he said has been out of the country for about a week.
While he also apologized for the absence of the GMD at the meeting due to his engagement elsewhere, Otti appealed for two weeks to make the presentation available.
The Sun