I was never investigated by EFCC —Egwu
By John Alechenu, Abuja
Published: Friday, 28 Nov 2008
A former Governor of Ebonyi State, Dr. Sam Egwu, on Thursday denied reports that he was being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Egwu, who appeared before the Senate for screening as a minister, also explained the sour relationship he once had with a former President of the Senate, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.
He spoke after Dr. Rilwanu Lukman, the honorary strategic adviser to President Umaru Yar’Adua, said sooner than later, Nigeria would have to fully deregulate the petroleum sector.
The former governor, who was responding to a question by Senator Lee Maeba, said, “As I stand before you now, I am not under investigation of any kind by the EFCC.
“I have not been invited by the EFCC or any other agency for any matter. In fact, none of those who served as commissioners in my administration is under investigation by the EFCC. None of them have been called.
“If you look at the (EFCC) report in front of you, it was just a local government, Afikpo North Local Government Area, that was investigated by the EFCC.”
The EFCC had on September 28, 2006, submitted a list of 30 governors to the Senate, whom it said were being investigated.
The commission, through its chairman at the time, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, added that four local governments were under probe.
The only governors that were not on the list were Donald Duke (Cross River), Abba Ibrahim (Yobe), Adamu Aliero (Kebbi), Peter Obi (Anambra), Danjuma Goje (Gombe) and Bukola Saraki (Kwara).
In response to another question which suggested that he was not tolerant to members of the legislature, he said, “A distinguished member of this chamber, Senator Julius Ucha, was a speaker of the Ebonyi State House of Assembly.
“His successor as speaker is now in the House of Representatives. That, I believe, is a progression.
“In the last Senate, Senator Christopher Nshi , had the opportunity to come back but he is not well. He didn’t even pick the form for a second term. The third Senator, Emma Agboti, approached me that he wanted to come back to the Senate and I said that’s fine by me.
“Two days later, he came back and said his people said he should go for the governorship slot instead. What was I to do?” (Laughter and murmuring in the chamber.)
On his relationship with Anyim when he was a governor, the ministerial nominee said, “I’m happy that in this chamber, there are Senators who were in the last Senate and were still here now. They were part of the reconciliation efforts at that time.
“I’m happy that the President of the Senate was one of those who came to Ebonyi at that time and I’m sure they would be in a better position to tell you their findings.
“Senator Anyim is my brother. When there were hues and cries about what was happening in Ebonyi, I urged him to face legislative business in Abuja . But there was what we call Ebonyi Formula.
“All Senators heading their different zones were to head those zones…I told them that they were the ones who would determine who got what. If I was fighting Senator Anyim, I wouldn’t have handed over the election materials of his zone to him.”
The ex-governor also said given the opportunity, he would use his experience to contribute meaningfully to the development of the nation.
Also at the screening, Lukman said political considerations had made Nigeria to earn less from the oil sector.
He said other countries of the world earned twice what Nigeria earned from their oil because of their tax regimes.
According to him, this formed part of the recommendations of a committee, he headed suggested to Yar’Adua on the restructuring of the oil sector.
He said, “What is expected from the reform of oil and gas is intended not only as a matter of restructuring and putting Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on a sound footing, but also looking at the whole industry and the confusion in the past where policy, supervision and commercial activities that were all mixed up will be uprooted by the number of institutions and organs that we have suggested.
“We proposed in our recommendations that the current loose arrangement between us and our international oil company partners should be properly constituted into joint venture limited liability companies which would be run on a commercial basis with our own NNPC being a major shareholder and the company should be run on a purely commercial basis in a transparent and accountable manner in a bid to compete.
“The NNPC itself should be a fully commercialised integrated oil company with the subsidiaries that are already in place, dealing with strict activities so that there would be no confusion.”
He also said the importation of petroleum products was likely to continue for a long time because most countries of the world hardly met their domestic needs hence the need to import.
Lukman said, “The truth of the matter is that even if the refineries are working fully, we will only process about 450,000 barrels per day. Our current production capacity is about three million barrels per day. We are operating well below that. Currently we are doing about a little over two million barrels per day.
“It is true that we should be exporting products rather than crude oil. But the current capacity is limited. One would think that the best way out is to build more refineries and more refineries in such a way that we would be exporting refined products instead of crude.”
After spending about two hours answering questions, he was asked to take a bow and go.
http://www.punchontheweb.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200811282215414Can someone please explain to me why the Senate should pass this guy with this kinda statement? Should a senator have anything to do with electoral material? Yet the senators seemed not to care. |
