The House of Representatives has vowed to probe and expose the circumstances which led to the loss of over $2.4 billion revenue from the alleged illegal sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil exported in 2015.
The House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating the “Alleged Loss Of Over $2.4bn From Illegal Crude Sales In 2015″, disclosed this at its inaugural meeting on Thursday in Abuja.
Recall that the House had at plenary last week Tuesday resolved to constitute an ad-hoc committee to probe the allegation, when a motion promoted by Hon. Isiaka Ibrahim from Ogun state was adopted.
The committee was also mandated to investigate all crude oil exports and sales by Nigeria from 2014 till date with regards to quantity, insurance, revenue generated, remittances into the federation accounts or other accounts as well as utilisation of the revenue for the period under review.
According to the motion, a whistleblower alleged in July 2020 that he had in July 2015, brought to the attention of a committee purportedly set up by the President for the recovery of missing crude oil exports, the existence of 48 million barrels of Nigeria’s Bonny Light crude oil in storage at several ports in China, under the authorisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to sell the cargo”.
Chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Mark Gbillah, in his remarks said the panel will engage local and foreign stakeholders to get to roots of the issues, also assured whistleblowers of adequate protection in the course of the exercise.
Gbillah appealed to international partners of Nigeria such as the United States, Mexican and the Chinese government to give the committee the cooperation required and it would visit some of the countries to obtain the facts behind the matter.
He commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for bringing forth the whistleblower though he and the minister of finance recently admitted that it has not been successful in terms of the amount of revelation that they expected and the recoveries expected.
“Now the Committee takes very seriously issues that have to do with allegations. We owe Nigerians the benefit of doubt in line with our Constitution. We owe them a duty of care to ensure that we unravel the facts of the matter before we start to make any assertions.
“It is obviously going to be important for us to arrive at the conclusion and provide a substantive report that would obviously be in the records and would determine whether or not these issues transpired and in carrying out our functions, one of the things we are going to need to do would be to interview those who made those allegations.
“Some of them have reached out to the committee alleging threat to their lives, they were intimidated at gun point allegedly. So we will have to travel out of the country to the United States, to Mexico, to China. I believe considering the amount of borrowing our country is subjected to now 2.4 billion dollars is money this country very seriously needs.
“So it is not something that this house is taking lightly. The leadership of the house is in support of this committee arriving at the truth and the facts this matter. And it shows the seriousness of this house in addressing issues that have to do with the commonwealth of Nigerians.
“Even though these allegations were made about two years ago you can see that this responsible House of the Nigerian people has still deemed it necessary to look into this matter even as we go about our electioneering campaigns. So I mentioned the fact that we would have to because of the fears expressed by these individuals,
“It is important to also point out that an American citizen who was also allegedly knowledgeable about these issues is currently in the Ikoyi prison over other infractions he allegedly committed in Nigeria. But there are insinuations that it is not outside this particular matter that informed those issues being brought against him.
“Of course nobody and no country would condone illegality from any national within their shores so there must have been reasons for his incarceration at the moment but I am only conveying to Nigerians the allegations that it was not also unconnected with the revelations that he had to provide with regards to this matter. There are other individuals who are in hiding but are reaching out to the committee.
“We want to assure all the whistleblowers who have revelations to provide to this honourable committee that their information would be treated in the strictest level of confidence as it is done all over the world . we can receive evidence behind closed doors before we make them public because we too are concerned about spurious and false allegations.
“So we too want to determine and see the facts behind any such allegations before we bring them to public knowledge because we are a public body saddled with the representation of the Nigerian people so we have to also do things responsibly.
“We are also keen as a house on very quickly enacting the whistleblower bill. We know the executive has been working on one but it appears to be taking them a lot of time to do so.
“Where these crude oil sales allegedly took place, those who were involved, who claimed they were entitled to some percentage of the amount when these sales took place, they’ve been very helpful in providing us with the names of some of the individuals who were allegedly in this matter but for the sake of confidentiality and seriousness of this matter,we might not be able to divulge that information until we obtain the facts.
“They have told us they have video recordings, photographs of the meetings, documentation to show email trail and discussions and even bank bank account statements of very highly placed people where these transactions tool place”, he added.
