ABUJA—Chairman of the House ad-hoc committee on the utilization of subsidy, Rep. Farouk Lawan at a press conference, yesterday, admitted serious pressure from government, marketers and other quarters on his committee for a favourable consideration during its investigation. [/b]Lawan at the briefing further asserted [b]that there would be no need for fuel importation in a regime of transparency in the petroleum sector.

This came as apprehension mounted in the presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP yesterday over the contents of the House of Representatives report on investigation of the utilization of the subsidy in the prices of petroleum products.

The apprehension based on the indictment of some major contributors to the party’s campaign coffers of 2011 heightened as the PDP summoned a meeting with the members of the House for April 30.

The party, however, dismissed the alleged anxiety saying that it welcomed the probe even as it admitted that only 12.75% of those indicted by the House report were contributors to the party’s campaign purse.

The apprehension nonetheless, criticism of the administration from opposition groups, lawyers, organised labour and civil society overflowed yesterday with calls on the administration to ensure full implementation of the report.

Tukur summons PDP House caucus meeting

The perceived apprehension in the PDP came as the national chairman of the ruling party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur yesterday requested a meeting with the PDP House caucus on April 30. More than N1 trillion was recommended by the House committee to be refunded to government treasury on account of the alleged fraud by government agencies and marketers involved in the subsidy scam.

Briefing House correspondents after yesterday’s sitting, the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Rep. Zakari Mohammed said, the recommendations of the Ad-hoc committee would be fully implemented to the letter.

Flanked by Lawan, Mohammed said, “we do not prosecute but we will ensure that the executive arm of government implements its recommendations to the letter. We will use all our legislative powers to ensure that after adoption, the report sees the light of the day.”

Asked how the legislative arm can achieve this, Mohammed said, “we are ingenuous, the executive arm will come to us also for certain things and we can use this report as a pre-condition and tell them that let this be done or we won’t do certain things that you are requesting us to do.”

Speaking at the briefing, Lawan admitted that the committee came under tremendous pressure from Government and oil marketers in the course of preparing the fuel subsidy report. WHY FROM GOVT??[/color]

Lawan said the pressure was enormous but we considered Nigeria first “because if we free the resources in the sector of its ills it would go a long way to benefit all Nigerians rather than a few of us.”

He said: “what we did was to look at 2009 till 2011 when the fuel subsidy started skyrocketing into billions because as at 2008 the fuel subsidy was just a little above N200billion and the companies involved then were only 20.

“So we dug from 2009 where there was a proliferation of companies as we needed to limit ourselves because of time to ensure we do a very good work. There were so many pressures from government officials and marketers who wanted to reach us through some of our colleagues. If we have compromised we wouldn’t have had the courage to ask them the questions we asked them.”

He, however, dismissed the initial media reports that the committee doctored the report before it was laid before the House. “The report has revealed a lot of things, and we extended the scope of our investigation”, Lawan said, stressing that “we are asking Mr President to reorganise the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources”, considering the spate of corruption revealed during the probe.

The committee also asked the Presidency to dissolve the Board of NNPC and PPPRA in the bid to sanitize the sector.

He maintained that there is “no need for importation of petroleum products for local consumption, if NNPC can effectively manage the local production stressing that government was losing too much money granting licence for importation of petroleum products.”[color=#000099]

The legislator who doubles as chairman, explained that the escalation of money spent on fuel subsidy manifested when the committee resolved to extend the scope of the investigation to 2009. He added that the committee discovered proliferation of companies that participated in the subsidy rose during the period under review.

for further reading, go to site:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/04/looters-tried-to-kill-our-report-committee/

the FG should apologise to Nigerians and go back to N65 per litre


He disclosed that his committee was able to put a lie to the claims of government officials that local refineries cannot refine enough petrol to meet local demand. The committee, observed Lawan, established that if local refineries were able to refine 235,000 barrels of the 445,000 barrels they are alloted daily, they would still be able to refine 40 million litres of petrol and 10 million litres of kerosine, which, he said, exceeded daily local demand.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2012/apr/20/national-20-04-2011-001.html