SENATE: PETROLEUM MINISTER MUST BE PROBED AGAIN.

The Senate has disclosed that it may summon
Petroleum Resources Minister Mrs. Diezani Alison-
Madueke, should the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) fail to tender documents relating to
her N10 billion private jet expenses.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum
Resources (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe, stated
this in a chat with reporters at the weekend in Abuja.
“We have not informed the Minister of the delay from
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. But, at the moment, it’s 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 and 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’ve gone with those programmes; we haven’t
seen that.
“We wanted information about the volumes of products
that are being sold via the Pipelines and Product
Marketing Company (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.
“The last sitting of the committee on these information
we require was 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.”
On the time frame to submit the required information to
the Committee, Abe said: “We’ve given time frames
from the start and the time frames have not been met,
but we believe that this is an issue that neither party
would like us to take to the extreme.
“So, we still believe that we would be able to work this
out because a lot of the information we are asking for
are practically already in the public domain and, apart
from that, this is our responsibility, as the oversight
committee, to have access to this information.
“It is not a witch-hunt or that we are automatically
going to share this information with the public but we
need to know so that we can work with them to see
how we can improve the things we think can be done
better and if we have advice we can proffer; we will do
that; after we know exactly what is going on.
“But definitely, we don’t think that any public
corporation that is being over-sighted by parliament
has a right to keep a committee of parliament in the
dark. Whatever they know, we are entitled to know as
well.
“We are also asking for details of how the 2013 budget
was implemented. It’s part of what we are asking for
now; so that we can look through the budget together
and it’s part of what we asked them to bring because
I’ve not even seen the budget. I haven’t seen NNPC’s
budget for this year.”