By Nathaniel Zacchaeus, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Gas Resources yesterday threatened to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in its ongoing probe of the N250bn Central Bank of Nigeria intervention funds to some firms in the oil and gas sector.
The panel gave the threat when the affected companies, numbering 14, who had so far collected N135bn out of the N250bn, appeared before it to defend the utilisation of the loans they collected.
The members of the Panel described as unacceptable, the fact that there was no synergy between the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the CBN on the project.
READ ALSO:‘88.5 million Nigerians face insufficient food consumption’
They also queried the discriminatory disbursement of the funds to the beneficiaries and wondered why some firms collected more than the N10bn credit limit.
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Agom Jarigbe, collected the records of the beneficiaries and the locations of their project sites for immediate investigation.
Speaking at the investigative hearing, Jarigbe lamented that the funds released under the gas expansion and intervention fund were inappropriately accessed.
He said, “The task of the committee is to ensure that the companies expended the funds on what they collected it for.
“The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds.
“Some of the beneficiaries did not follow the guidelines. For instance, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is not even aware that the funds have been released.
“The guidelines stated clearly without ambiguity that they are supposed to evaluate the ministry before the list of the qualified ones would be sent to the CBN for them to access the loans but that was not done properly.
“We have also discovered that some of the companies do not have anything on the ground since they got the loan. The committee would investigate all the observations and work on them and let Nigerians know the true position of things,” Jarigbe added.
However, the legal adviser to one of the beneficiaries, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, Mathew Agbadon, told the committee that the publication made by the committee had put the firm in a negative perspective.
He said, “There has been a fundamental misconception out there in the public domain that some people just leverage on the CBN money, stole it, and went away. That is far from the truth. The truth of the he matter is that as a beneficiary of that scheme, we had business with the commercial bank.
“The discussion was done at the commercial bank level and due diligence was done and our application was approved. Based on the application we accessed the facility as an organisation. Lee Engineering has been in the oil and gas industry for 32 years with over 4, 000 employees.
“This particular project is one of the outfits of Lee Engineering and it is located in Warri, Delta State. If the Committee is ready to visit the project today, we are ready for it. It is 90 per cent completed.
“It is billed for commissioning in the first quarter of next year. We are looking forward to President Bola Tinubu commissioning the project being the first of its kind in this part of the World.”
In 2021, the Ministry initiated the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP) to encourage domestic utilisation of gas in the country.
The Director of Gas in the Ministry, Oluremi Komolafe told the Committee that the Ministry was not aware of the disbursement of the fund even though it partnered with the CBN on the scheme.
She added that 150 applications were received and that 69 companies were recommended and presently 16 applications are being processed.
She said none of the firms whose applications were being processed made the list of the beneficiaries of the scheme.
Some of the firms that claimed that they had no business with either the ministry or the CBN were rebuked by the committee.
They argued that the beneficiary got a single-digit interest rate from the commercial banks because it was part of the conditions to access the loans.
*Senate summons Alake for disregarding order
The Senate yesterday summoned the Minister of Mines and Solid Minerals, Mr Dele Alake, to appear before its Committee on Solid Minerals next week Wednesday.
He is expected to brief it on the federal government’s work plan to develop the sector and block illegal mining.
The panel berated Alake, for allegedly disregarding all invitations so far sent to it since he was appointed by the President.
The Committee resolved, during its meeting and expressed dissatisfaction about the failure of the Minister to appear before it
The panel said Alake usually gives excuses that he travelled with Tinubu.
The Committee expressed concerns that the Minister had abandoned his primary duties of bringing the mining sector to international repute.
It stressed that his relative inexperience in the sector had further created an unclear future for the yet-to-be-explored wealth.
The Committee, therefore, threatened to give zero allocation to the Ministry in the 2024 fiscal year, if the Minister failed to amend his ways, to start responding to the invitations of the Committee.
The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Sampson Ekong, who issued the summons at the meeting, maintained that his panel would ensure the right legal frameworks that would bring a positive turnaround to the sector.
Ekong pointed out that accountability and transparency would be the watchword of the Committee.
He noted that the Bitumen bill sent to the Committee would be expeditiously processed and presented to the Senate for passage and onward transition to the President for assent.
He said, “The Nigerian solid minerals and extractive industry is very vast and grossly under-taped. God in his unquestionable benevolence has blessed Nigeria with huge mineral deposits.
“However, several factors have continued to hamper the sector. The sector has the potential of contributing significantly to our economy.”
Ekong also pointed out that the 2021 contributions of the solid minerals sector to Nigeria’s GDP stood at 0.63 per cent.
He said, “The performance, though, an improvement when compared to previous years where it contributed 0.45 percent in 2020 and 0.26 percent in 2019, is still negligible and disappointing considering the humongous potentials therein.”
The committee Chairman expressed concerns that the low output had been attributed to the over 90 per cent of the activities of the mining industry are dominated by artisanal operators.
He said, “Nigeria is blessed with over forty identifiable minerals in varying commercial quantities. Developing the solid minerals base of the country can offer the Nigerian economy the much-needed diversification it has been yearning for.
“Our vast solid mineral endowments should be utilized to drive prosperity for all Nigerians, not abused to fuel insecurity, exacerbate economic dislocation and opportunity theft.
“We will through this committee, vigorously explore trajectories for our solid minerals to generate revenue meaningfully for the federal government and help strengthen our economy.”
Senator Onawo Ogoshi, representing Nasarawa South Senatorial District, suggested that the Committee should give zero allocation to the Ministry of Mines and Solid Minerals in the 2024 fiscal year if the Minister continued to ignore the Committee.
