The House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee investigating
alleged 17 billion dollars undeclared oil proceed has summoned Ibrahim Magu,
the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to
appear before it on Tuesday.
Chairman of the committee, Rep. Abdulrazak Namdas, summoned
Magu on Monday in Abuja at the opening of the investigation where all the
invited stakeholders sent their subordinates to represent the committee.
Also summoned by the ad hoc committee to appear before it
were the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), Dr Maikanti Baru; and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin
Emefiele.
Others were Director-General of Nigerian Maritime
Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dakuku Peterside; and Accountant
General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris.
The committee also summoned the Group General Manager,
National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), Stephen Sejebor;
and Director of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Modecai Ladan, in
connection with the stolen fund.
Namdas, who is the spokesman of the House, noted that since
the nation lived by oil proceeds, no fight against corruption could be
meaningful without serious search-light on the industry.
He warned that the House would not hesitate to invoke its
constitutional powers to compel the invited chief executives to appear, if they
default.
The lawmaker turned back directors and other management
staff who were sent as representatives of their respective organisations.
Namdas had quoted reports that over 57 million barrels of
crude oil were illegally exported and sold in the U.S. between January 2011 and
December 2014.
He said that the estimated revenue loss by the government of
Nigeria “is around 12 billion dollars.
“At an exchange rate of N196 to a dollar, this translates to
over N2 trillion. You could imagine what the value is now”.
Speaker of the House, Mr Yakubu Dogara, who declared the
public hearing open, lamented that if not for the constant theft in the oil
industry, the nation would not have been in economic recession at the moment.
“The incidence of money missing in the industry has become a
recurrent decimal to the point that news items in the media are incomplete
without mention of the ills of the industry.
“The reports of the media on the ills in oil industry
clearly attest to the concern of the government to tackle corruption in the
industry head on”, he said.
The speaker, who was represented by the Minority Whip, Rep.
Yakubu Barde, said that the country had received disturbing audit reports about
the oil industry.
He cited a report from an anti-corruption organisation, the
Action Network for Economic Justice, in which it claimed that NNPC did not
remit over 12 billion dollars to the federation account since 2009.
“The same organisation alleged that the sum of 5.9 billion
dollars of the federation accounts were lost to offshore processing agreements
and through crude theft in the country.
“If loss of revenue to the nation through the oil industry
was to be avoided, I can beat my chest that under no circumstances should
Nigeria be talking about recession.
“Therefore, no amount of investigation in the oil industry
can be said to be an over kill as the oil industry has become endemic.
“The investigation of the 17billion dollars therefore
remains part of the ongoing process in confronting the hydra headed monster”,
he added.
By Wale Odunsi
