MEMBERS of the House of Representatives adhoc Committee on Crude oil swap have vowed to expose all shoddy deals perpetrated by government officials involved in all swap arrangements.
This revelation was made yesterday by the chairman of the adhoc committee, Rep Zakari Mohammed, APC, Baruten/Kaima Federal Constituency.
The former House spokesman who spoke on behalf of fellow lawmakers said”we are still studying all the memoranda sent to us by the agencies but one thing we can assure all Nigerians is that all sharp practices will be unearthed”.
“We’ll dig deep into all the transactions and make a powerful delivery at the end of the day as this is not like any other probe of the past”.
“As I speak to you now we are working round the clock to ensure that there are no mistakes that will rubbish our efforts”.
Asked whether the committee members are under any form of pressure to alter their findings, Mohammed said”well that is a matter for another day as it is we are only concerned about the volume of swap deals and all the annual reports of the agencies involved”.
“One thing is however certain, all members of this committee promised to work hard towards achieving success at the end of the probe”.
On when the probe intends wrapping up its investigative inquiry, Mohammed said our deadline to submit our report I think is 6 weeks that is why we work on Saturdays because the work is voluminous”.
“At the rate we are going once we conclude the investigative hearing it won’t take us two weeks to lay our reports before the entire House”.
On what happened to the agencies that earlier failed to submit their memoranda, he said”they eventually submitted before our 12noon November 18 deadline”.
It was learnt that the Crude Oil division and the PPMC had failed to submit their memoranda until the committee threatened to issue a bench warrant to the three defaulting agencies.
The Adhoc committee was set up following a motion promoted in June 2015 by Rep Michael Enyong ,Akwa Ibom PDP, who alleged that the country has lost considerable revenue, from the oil traders involved in the crude oil swaps and Offshore Shore Processing Agreements (OPAs).
There were allegations that the oil traders under-delivered petroleum products to the PPMC, the NNPC subsidiary responsible for taking delivery of the products after crude oil has been lifted by the traders.
The committee is charged with exposing corruption, inefficiency, and waste in the operations of the swap agreement, as a prelude to the efficient and transparent management of the nation’s resources for improved revenue generation for the country.
