By Christiana Ekpa
The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee said it will engage local and foreign stakeholders to unravel the facts behind the alleged loss of over 2.4 billion dollars in Revenue from Illegal sale of 48 Million Barrels of Crude Oil Export in 2015 including Crude Oil Export from 2014 till date.
The Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee, Mark Gbillah stated this at the National Assembly Complex Abuja during inuagural meeting of the Committee to investigate the allegation.
The lawmaker who assured all the whistleblowers of utmost confidentiality about their identity said the Investigation was inline with President Buhari Buhari’s Anti-corruption drive.
The Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee pointed that the committee had to be set up now seven years after the incident because it was brought to the fore in 2020 and the House needed background information for a thorough investigation and outcome.
The Committee solicited the support of individuals and corporate organisations to enable the committee achieve its mandate.
A member of the committee, Ganiyu Johnson explained that as part of efforts to revive the various refineries in the country, the House Committee on the state of refineries visited some of the refineries and gave assurance of PortHarcout and Warri refineries coming into full operation by first and last quarters of next year.
He said “like I said initially this is the House Adhoc Committee to investigate the alleged loss of 2.4 billion dollars from the sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil also mandated by the House to investigate crude oil sales from 2014 till date and whistleblower information and recoveries and expenditure of these recoveries. so in a summary the key issues of this Adhoc Committee is mandated by the House to look into and I want to say that by the leave of the speaker and members of House of Representatives I have been assigned as the chairman of this committee.
“It is a show by the leadership of the house of their willingness and transparency in arriving at truth behind whatevru has transpired in this circumstance because and allegation was raised in 2020 by a whistleblower out of the country who alleged that Nigerian’s crude in China, when the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came on board was diverted and sold allegedly by certain individuals who were in government who were in the nation’s oil corporation who were in the security agencies and who were also cronies of those in Authority at the time. 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 made those allegations. some of them have reached out to the committee alleging threat to their lives. they were intimidated at gun point allegedly.
“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.
“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 in other climes. 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 saddler 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 commend president Buhari administration for bringing fourth a whistleblower policy but very recently the president himself and the ministers of finance admitted that policy has not been successful in terms of the amount of revelation that they expected and the recoveries expected and these are obviously tied to the lack of protection to whistleblower in the current policy that is in existence. we would be appealing to other international partners of Nigeria, the US, Mexican government, the Chinese government to give this committee the cooperation required because we would also necessarily need to also visit some of these countries to obtain the facts behind the matter. 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 tool place, they are being 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. we hope that Nigerians and the media would be very objective in this issue and provide us with the support that is required to carry out this very opmerius assignment”, he said.
