Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Thursday shunned Senate Committee on Downstream over request to give explanation on crude swap in the country, distribution of the petroleum product and implementation of NNPC budget in the year 2013.
The Committee also demanded for the names of people involved in and beneficiaries of the crude oil swap in the country.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Downstream sector, Senator Magnus Abe while responding to the request of Engr Tony Oguigbe, Group Executive Director, Refinery and Petrochemicals Directorate and Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu who demanded for more time from the committee gave them maximum of two weeks to collate necessary documents and appear before the committee
In letter sent to Senate by Oguigbe,”I would like to request your kind consideration to give us another date to enable me attend and participate in my brother’s wedding taking place on Nov 1-2 at Agbor and Asaba respectively. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause your esteemed committee and I kindly request that you re-schedule for another day.”
Also, The Group General Manager of the National Assembly Liasion Office signed the letter asking for time to collate additional information on petroleum products and crude swap arrangement.
Senator Abe said: “I agree with NNPC that they need time to collate these documents and then, bring them forward. There are also issues to do with the implementation of the NNPC budget. We’ve also written to them to furnish us with all the details of the budget implementation as the year progresses.
“We accept their reasons for not being here but I would like to seize this opportunity to ask them and very seriously call on NNPC and indeed, call on all government agencies, that cooperating with the Legislature is important for the stability of our democracy. We need the cooperation of all agencies that are to work with us, in order to safeguard the interest of all Nigerians. So, I will plead with NNPC, to, very quickly, within the next one week, assemble all the documents that we have asked for, particularly documents relating to the distribution of petroleum products in this country and the crude-swap arrangement.
“This is an area that is of great importance to the Nigerian public because we need to know exactly how this arrangement is being carried out, who are people involved and the benefits to the Nigerian people and these are some of the information we are asking for. So, we will give them time to collate their documents and also within two weeks, they should collate their documents within and outside Nigeria.
“That time is enough for them to collate their documents and after two weeks, we fix a new date for this meeting and then, we hope that they would not only come for this meeting, but they would come prepared, along with so e other information on the NNPC budget.
“Particularly, we would like to know how many aircrafts the Corporation has and how many is on hire, how many belongs to them and how much is being spent on the hiring of the aircraft. We would like to have these details.”