$2.4bn: Malami bows to pressure, to appear before HoR next week
BY TOM OKPE
The Attorney General of the Federation, (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami has bowed to pressure, agreeing to provide relevant information on alleged sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil amounting to over $2.4 billion and crude oil export to global destinations from 2014 to date.
The Minister expressed readiness in a letter sent to the House Ad-hoc Committee Investigating Alleged Loss of over $2.4 billion from Illegal Sale of 48 Million Barrels of Crude Oil Export in 2015, including Crude Oil Export.
The Ad-hoc Committee had on Wednesday threatened to issue warrant of arrest on Malami and Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, if they fail to appear before its ongoing probe.
Chairman of the Committee, Mark Gbillah at resumed investigative hearing on Thursday acknowledged the receipt of the letter from the AGF.
Gbillah said: “Today we are in receipt of a letter from the Attorney General of the Federation and the Minister of Justice who is averring his determination to respect the doctrine of separation of powers and to support our extant laws.
“He has indicated the fact that they are trying to put together the comprehensive response that we have raised.
“While we appreciate the Attorney General’s response we would like to indicate that it came a lot later than we expected and it came without the response that we referred to.
“So, we will appreciate if the Attorney General and Minister provide these responses and also, appear before the Committee next Thursday. So, let’s give him the window to appear before the Committee.”
He however, said the Committee has not received any submission or response from the Minister of Finance who was summoned along with her Justice counterpart.
“The Accountant General sent a response and has not responded to our follow up because we asked further questions to what he provided.
“But we want to call on the Minister of Finance, like the Attorney General show regards and respect for the separation of powers as enshrined in our constitution, and respond promptly to the request of the Committee so that we can get to the bottom of our investigation.
“Like I already said, we are giving her the benefits of doubt, we are not unmindful of the other powers we have, and we are afraid to exert them and we will do so if the leeway we have provided is still neglected and not recognized by the Minister of Finance,” he said.
The committee went ahead to grill some companies and deposit money banks involved in the scandal.
Speaking on the activities of Equinor with respect to the OML 129, Gbillah frowned at the inability of the company to effectively operate the asset as well as breach of extant laws, thereby resulting into loss of revenue to the Federation.
He said: “Why I’m saying this is because you had a period of exploration that elapsed and you did not bring anything to production.
“You have the OML phase till date, you told us here on oath that you’re still doing exploring.”
In his response, Equinor’s Chief Financial Officer, Charles Nwoko who acknowledged that the company which acquired the 30 years licence obtained since 2013 will expire this year.
He explained that the company is looking at the most commercially viable way so that the company can bring value to Nigerian government and earn profit as contractor in the operation.
Speaking further, Gbillah who observed that the company does not have the capacity to operate the Deep Offshore asset, maintained that: “It can also be that you don’t have the capacity to be able to operate that facility especially since it is gas because we have understanding, what it will require to do gas deep offshore. So, perhaps that is the problem you are having,” he noted.
While dismissing the insinuation, Nwoko said: “No, that’s not it Mr. Chairman. Like I said, Shell is the operator in the pre-unit phase and we are working with Shell on that. And like you know, you did acknowledge that it’s deep offshore discovery, because we do not have the facility to aggregate gas, it’s not like oil that is more fungible, gas is not as fungible as oil.”
In his reaction, Gbillah said: “Yes, we appreciate that and which is why it is surprising when we know that Norwegian Government is a key shareholder, your companies that are not investing their Sovereign Wealth Fund that seems to be amassing daily towards production that would be of value to us as a country.
“You can see where the world is going, we are going in the gas direction and we have this kind of asset that for 30 years nothing has happened on. So, it can be the decision of this Committee to NNPC not to further renew to Equinor because we have not seen the capacity being displayed.”
The lawmaker while scrutinizing the document submitted by the Equinor representative, expressed concern over some of the documents that were not signed nor stamped, while others did not show the codes.
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Therefore, the Committee resolved to request for information bothering on Equinor’s annual obligation and compliance with the statutory requirements.
Gbillah requested for documents such as proof of Pre-shipment certificates, Q88 form, names and statements of accounts where proceeds of crude oil, sold are deposited, stock certificate, copies of procurement details, details of cargoes, date of crude lifting, quantity, destination, and type of crude lifted, among others, which are to be submitted by next week, Wednesday, unfailingly.
