Senate summons finance minister, IOCs over NDDC’s indebtedness

The Minister of Finance, Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Auditor-General of the Federation, are expected to appear before the National Assembly’s joint Committee on the Niger Delta Development Commission any moment from this week.

They were invited over the alleged huge indebtedness to the NDDC.

The joint panel had penultimate Tuesday, summoned 17 oil companies to appear before it last week Wednesday over their alleged N72bn and $73m indebtedness to the agency.

Our correspondent learnt that the meeting could not hold due to logistics reasons.

Some of the oil firms are Shebah Express Petroleum, Atlas Petroleum, Allied Energy, Frontier Oil, Seven Energy Limited, Belma Oil Producing Limited, AITECO Exploration and Production, Dubri Oil, Conoil Producing and Continental Oil and Gas.

Others are Enageed Resources Limited, New Cross Exploration and Production, Pan Ocean Oil Corporation Nigeria Limited, Nigeria Petroleum Development Resources. Munipulo Petroleum Development Company, Prime Exploration and Production Company and Nigeria LNG Limited.

Our correspondent learnt that the panel could not attend to the oil firms on Wednesday.

The Chairman of the joint committee, Peter Nwaoboshi, said fresh facts emerged that the Federal Government owed the agency about N1.2tn.

He said, “It is not just about talking about the activities of the NDDC, what of the money they owed the agency too?

“The 8th National Assembly did a technical audit of the NDDC and the findings were very revealing and you see that the list of debtors is very appalling.

“The oil companies owed NDDC a lot of money. For instance, the Shell Petroleum Development Company owed NDDC over N54.9bn as of the time the calculation was done.

“If you add what they owe then to what it would have accumulated now, it should be approximately N57bn. Other oil companies like the Allied Energy owe about about $43m. Atlas Petroleum ($22m), Shebah Express Petroleum ($23.8m), Pan Ocean ($46.6m), and so on.

“If you investigate, they don’t even give the real annual budget. Even the small portion that they agreed was their annual budget.

“Some of them tamper with their annual budgets. Some are paying the actual expenditure or stop gap but the law says it should be the annual budget.

“Even the one that they were supposed to pay, they were not paying. The NDDC consultants have been going after them but they refused to pay.

“We have told the Central Bank of Nigeria to send the monies wrongly credited to the NPA, to the rightful owners, which is the NDDC.

“We are expecting the IOCs and other oil companies to come by Wednesday next week to tell Nigerians why they would not obey the laws of the land. We will make sure that they pay all these monies to the accounts of the NDDC.”