The Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) has accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation of deliberately attempting to deny it access to vital information.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe, told journalists in Abuja on Sunday that the NNPC had consistently failed to make available relevant information about its financial dealings since October 2013.
Abe noted that the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Deziani Allison- Madueke, may be invited for questioning if the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation fails to provide documents relating to the N10bn allegedly expended by her to charter private aircrafts.
Abe said, “We have not informed the minister of the delay from the NNPC and there are issues we know will involve the minister but I don’t think this, at this point, involves the minister. But if we can’t resolve it, we will ask the minister to come with them.
“At the moment, it is between the committee and the NNPC. The NNPC is a corporation. We believe we can sort this out.
“We asked about the crude swap transactions, to know exactly what volumes are being swapped, what the country is getting in return. We haven’t seen that.
“We also wanted information on the rehabilitation of the refineries to know exactly how far they have gone with those programmes, we haven’t seen that.
“We wanted information about the volumes of products that are being sold via the PPMC. We actually haven’t seen that.
“We wanted information on the aircraft that has now become an issue. We’ve actually asked for this information since last year and we haven’t seen that.
“So, there are lots of what I would call routine information from the NNPC which should be between us, the committee and the NNPC. Oversight is not just visiting the facilities to walk around.
“It also involves taking a detailed look at how things are done, what’s being done and how the country is benefitting from some of these things that are happening and how we can work together to improve what is being done.
“Unfortunately however, we haven’t received the kind of cooperation I would like to see from the NNPC and we are still believing they would step up their game and work with us so that we can get the best for the Nigerian people.”
Abe lamented that the NNPC did not send representative to his committee’s last sitting where the information it required ought to have been provided.
He said, “This is particularly bad! They didn’t send anybody; it was only when I got back to the office that I saw a letter from the NNPC, saying that they were still trying to collate this information…since last year, they’ve been collating this information.”
In a related development, the House of Representatives had said it would commence the probe of the Minister of Petroleum on April 28 as its Public Accounts Committee investigating the expenditure had disclosed that it had secured the aircraft travel logs to start the probe.