Reps to probe N500bn debt

Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House

The House Representatives on Thursday ordered a probe of Total, Oando and independent oil marketers over a N500bn debt owed the Pipeline Products Marketing Company.

This followed a motion which came under a matter of urgent public importance sponsored by Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe.

While presenting the motion, Jarigbe alleged among other things that members of staff of the PPMC appear to have looked the other way while public funds were left in the hands of private oil marketers to the detriment of Nigerians.

The lawmaker also claimed that some of the marketers “surreptitiously” sold products stored in their respective tank farms without recourse to lay down rules and also failed to remit funds which accrued from such sales to the PPMC.He said, “The complacency of the management of the PPMC, might compromise the interest of government and deprive the country from getting back funds that are arbitrarily in custody of some few individuals who intend to sabotage government and criminally convert funds that should rightly accrue to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. This act of criminality should be vehemently resisted.”

According to him, marketers indebted to the PPMC include “Oando, Forte Oil, Nipco, Total Oil, Conoil, Mobil, Masters Energy Oil and Gas, Hyden Petroleum, “Rahamaniya Petroleum, Amicable Petroleum, Aieteo Petroleum, Honeywell Oil, Capital Oil, Felande Petroleum, Sharon Oil and Zamson Petroleum.”

The session, which was presided over by Speaker Yakubu Dogara, adopted the motion by voice vote and resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the matter and report back to the House in two weeks.

In another development, the lawmakers urged the executive to expedite action on the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons and the rebuilding efforts in the North-East ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency.

This followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by Mohammed Sherrif.

He said, “Insurgents first attacked the town on April 25, 2013 and burnt down over 500 houses. They attacked it again on May 7, 2013; on August 4, 2013; on August 24, 2013 and ultimately overrun it on September 1, 2014.”

The lawmaker succeeded in convincing his colleagues to adopt the motion and the prayers contained therein. Dogara put the prayers to a voice vote and it was unanimously adopted.

Part of the prayers which the House adopted was a call on the Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma-led Committee on the Rehabilitation of the North-East to make public the names of individuals and organisations who made pledges in order for them to redeem such pledges.

The lawmakers also observed a minute silence in honour of slain soldiers and others who sacrificed their lives in the anti-terror war.

culled from the Punch