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.”