•Cite gross violation of BPE Act •BPE faults process •Reps, NNPC director in war of words The House of Representatives Committee on Privatisation, Wednesday, halted the proposed privatisation of the nation’s three refineries by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with immediate effect. The three refineries are located in Port-Hacourt, Kaduna and Warri respectively The committee, in making the pronouncement in Abuja, on Wednesday, after engaging the officials of the NNPC and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on the exercise, declared that NNPC violated the provisions of the BPE Act Section 11, 2009. It accused the NNPC of acting unilaterally by going ahead with the exercise without involving other stakeholders as contained in the Act. Before making the pronouncement by the chairman of the committee, Honourable Ahmed Yerima, there was exchange of words between the Group Executive Director (GED)of the NNPC in charge of refineries, Mr Anibor Kragba and the members of the committee, which led to the abrupt adjournment of the sitting. Trouble started at the commencement of the sitting of the committee when it was informed that the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the NNPC, who is also the Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr Ibe Kachikwu was being represented by the GED, Mr Kragba. Most of the members of the committee kicked against the arrangement, insisting that the minister of state should appear personally on a later day based on their past experiences with the corporation when its chief executive had failed to honour invitations extended to the corporation. But after assurances from the NNPC GED that he had the mandate of the minister to represent him and that he was competent to handle the matter in question, Kragba was allowed to make his presentation alongside the acting BPE Director-General, Mr Vincent Akpotarie, during which he denied that the corporation was not out to privatise the refineries, but to only source for core investors to come and invest in the refineries to enable rehabilitation since they were cost-intensive. Thereafter, the committee wanted to know who authorised the corporation to embark on such an exercise without the knowledge of the National Assembly and the BPE of which Kragba replied that he needed clarification on this, saying he was just appointed into the office. This development hiked the members of the committee who challenged him on his earlier claim that he was competent to handle the matter to their satisfaction At this stage, Kragba cut in saying, “with due respect to this committee, I was appointed into the office by Mr President who believed in my competence.” In a swift reaction to his statement, all the members went wild for using such a derogatory language on them and resolved to call off the sitting. Speaking, the chairman of the committee, Honourable Yerima, ruled that the NNPC should stop the exercise with immediate effect for gross violation of the BPE Act. He warned Kragba to be careful of his choice of words before the parliament, saying “I am sure if the President reads this BPE Act, he will not be happy with what you are doing. “We are preaching change, change in our ways of doing things for the betterment of the country, yet we the leaders are doing things the other way round. Impunity is still rampant, I am a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and promised the people of real change before they gave us their votes,” he stated Earlier, the acting DG of the BPE, Mr Akpotaire, had raised some fundamental issues of the privatisation exercise that needed to be sorted out before it could be done in the interest of the nation, saying that BPE was not part of the process.]]>