By Kassim Omomia
The Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, has incurred the wrath of the House of Representatives Committee on Public Account (PAC) for consistently failing to honour invitation over audit querIes by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation into alleged financial irregularities in the agency running into trillions of Naira.
The inaction followed the walking out of DPR’s delegation by the committee after the Director/CEO, Engr. Sarki Auwalu, again failed to appear for the hearing. The queries according to the Auditor General’s report states that: “Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) collected the sum of N733,054,301, I73.04 but paid a net of N706,283,397,141.80.
Others are “Review of documents relating to outstanding royalty, gas flare penalty, gas I sales royalty and concession rental due from oil and gas companies showed that the sum of US$ 3,214,022,999.93 was not collected by DPR as at when due.”
Deputy Chairman of the committee, Honourable Abdulkadir Abdullahi infuriated by the disrespectful act of the agency, noted that the committee was inundated with series of excuses from the CEO why he should not appear.
“We just received the letter that he won’t be coming today and the submissions also. I am afraid, I do not think we should allow this appearance to go on because respect begets respect.” he said.
He added that “If the CEO won’t appear, he should have informed us earlier, and this is not first time, you have been making excuses one after the other and today again, it is the same old story.
“So am afraid, I want to insist that the CEO appears; these are not issues raised by us, they were raised by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation,” he said.
He explained that the National Assembly members were elected to be watchdogs over public funds but was worried that certain critical government agencies have the habit of declining summons by parliament.
“It is in your character to deliberately disrespect the parliament; I am afraid we can not continue”, Abdullahi said.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Committee, Hon Wole Oke said that the committee was not happy receiving a response to the query raised by the Auditor General the same day of the hearing.
He noted that DPR ought to have furnished the committee with necessary documents before their appearance to enable it deal accordingly
“We won’t be able to take you today; we want the CEO to appear before this committee, we are a friendly committee and very civil. We are mindful of the privilege, out of 200 million Nigerians, you gave opportunity to serve you, to represent you, so we do not attack, oppress, intimidate people that appear before us, it is not in our culture. We speak to issues, facts and law; if the Auditor General did not raise this queries, we will not invite you. We need to work in synergy to deepen the rule of law and make our country a better place. And the figures we are talking about is in the region of trillions of naira; the first query, the figures is over one trillion naira.
“So it is a very serious matter, I want you to see reasons with us and it is better for the CEO to cause appearance even if he will delegate you to speak to the matter, let him be here and say so,” he said.
However, Head of Planning, DPR, Johnson Makanjuola who led the delegation tendered an unreserved apology on be half of the CEO.
He explained that the CEO attended the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting with the minister on Wednesday. According to him, the CEO was given an assignment which required him go back to the villa today.
“When we discovered that he won’t make it here today, we came to meet the chairman of the committee to explain to him that we will be bringing a letter on his behalf. So we tender unreserved apology on his be half and I plead that you listen to what we have to say. He is a new man on the seat, even if he is here, I will be the one to speak on the observations raised,” he said.
The committee, however, resolved that the CEO should appear in person unfailingly next week .
