Reactions have continued to trail the report of Mr. Farouk Lawan led House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee on fuel subsidy regime management, as some stakeholders in the industry are calling for the full implementation of the subsidy report. Head of the civil society, Save Nigeria Group, Pastor Tunde Bakare, believes the report is a key test for President Goodluck Jonathan’s government.
The House is expected to vote on an amended version of the report and pass it on to the executive branch for implementation. Amongst those to be prosecuted will be high-level officials in the oil and gas industry for alleged theft and mismanagement of the state fuel subsidy.
The House of Representatives, in the weeks past, launched a probe into the spending of the subsidy fund as a fall out of the national strikes and protests that paralysed economic activities in the country in January, following the removal of subsidies on fuel. The Farouk Lawan led committee began and concluded its sitting and came out with a report detailing high level incompetence and mismanagement of resources that cost the nation $6.8 billion between 2009 and 2011.
While the sitting lasted, about 140 oil firms were pinpointed to have benefitted from the initial six firm in 2006. Most of these companies could not provide documented evidence of how they got allocations to import fuel but handsomely benefitted from the fuel subsidy fund. One of the beneficiaries came to the public hearing with no document to back up the N2.3 billion he got to import fuel into the country. In another case, two businessmen who made a pitch to handle waste management at the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. instead applied to become importers and got a $12.4 million contract in 2011 for fuel it never supplied.
And just like the monumental scandal that passed for the probe of perceived irregularities in the power sector a few years ago, many are of the opinion that things might not change much this time around, especially as the report indicted some of the elite class who dominate politics and business in the country.
House Speaker, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, also declared in the last week of April: "we are fighting against entrenched interests whose infectious greed has hurt our people. Therefore, be mindful they will fight back and they normally do fight dirty."
However, stakeholders are of the opinion that the Committee must of necessity, carry out a clean job in order to safeguard the integrity of not just the report itself, but ultimately the image of the House, given the crucial role of the legislative arm in any democracy.
Former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Prof. Tam David-West, the African Network for the Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), oil workers, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) are all of the opinion that incumbent Ministers of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, and her Finance counterpart, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, should be fired and other indicted officials prosecuted.
They argued that with the high-level of graft in the subsidy regime, which the ministers presided, they were no longer fit to keep their offices.
Already, the Ministry of Finance has terminated the services of auditing firms, Akintola Williams and Co and Adekanola and Co, responsible for certifying the documents and claims of the marketers before payment.
But if the Jonathan government is to gain the confidence of Nigerians, stakeholders say the first point of call for the government will be bringing all culprits indicated by the report to book, especially at a time when Nigerians had to part away with hundreds of millions of naira in subsidy savings to a government which says this is a good way the tackle corruption.
- By Yemi Onabanjo
