The National Assembly has conducted 18 legislative probes into sundry cases of crude theft, pipeline vandalisation, misappropriation, Joint Venture agreements, missing crude revenue in Nigeria’s corruption-tainted oil and gas sector from 1999-2014.
According to the outcomes of the selected major probes in the oil sector, about $15bn was lost to fraud while a whopping $6.8bn subsidy was unaccounted for. The period also witnessed the alleged missing N500bn SURE-P claims for oil subsidy for a period of time.
Also, about $16bn was unaccounted for in the power sector while about N2trillion was unremitted by the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
This information is contained in a recently released study by the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS). The study made public on October 20 contains a detailed report of 82 key probes and investigative public hearings undertaken by the National Assembly since inception.
In 2000, a 14-member House Ad-hoc Committee investigated the federal government’s crude exports and refined imports amongst other oil and gas industry issues for the period of May 1999-2000. The Ibrahim Ganyama-led House Ad-hoc Committee in its findings reported that Nigeria lost $80 million crude revenue from January-August 2000 as a result of NNPC’s failure to follow the statutory empowerment of lifting 300,000 barrels per day.
The Ad-hoc committee described NNPC’s operations, record keeping, and tendering processes as “shoddy” and “fraudulent”.
“Illegal sale of petroleum products becomes a booming business as Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) continues to pay equalisation claims while NNPC continues with endless bridging, and DPR went to sleep in the exercise of monitoring,” the 2000 probe reported.
