Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, resolved to investigate the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over alleged $1.5 billion illegal withdrawals from the dividend account of the NLGN.
Consequently, the House mandated its committee on Public Accounts to undertake the probe and report back to the House within four weeks.
The committee in the course of its investigation is expected to interface with management of NNPC and NLGN on transactions that has occurred on the dividend account.
This followed the adoption of a motion sponsored by the minority leader,Ndudi Elumelu, under matters of urgent public importance on the “need to investigate illegal withdrawals from the NLNG dividends account by the management of NNPC,” at Tuesday’s plenary.
Elumelu, in his motion, that dividend from the NLNG, which is jointly owned by the Federal government represented by the NNPC, Shell Gas B.V, Total LNG Nigeria Ltd and Eni International, ought to paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the government.
However, the the minority leader, noted that the NNPC without consultations with states and appropriations by the National Assembly has allegedly tampered with the NLNG dividends account.
According to him, “the NLNG is jointly owned by the Government of Nigeria ably represented by the NNPC with a shareholding of 49%, shell gas B.V 25.6%, Total LNG Nigeria LTD 15% and ENI international 10.4%….the dividends from the NLNG are supposed to be paid into the consolidated revenue funds account of the federal government and to be shared amongst the three tiers of government.”
“The NNPC who represents the government of Nigeria on the board of the NLNG had unilaterally without the required consultations with states and the mandatory appropriation from the national assembly illegally tampered with the funds at the NLNG dividends account to the tune of 1.05 billion dollars, thereby violating the nations appropriation law.”
Elumelu stated that it is worrisome that there is allegedly no transparency “in this extra budgetary spending as only the group managing director and the corporation’s chief financial officer had the knowledge of how the 1.05 billion dollars was spent.”
The lawmaker further expressed concern that “there are no records showing the audit and recovery of accrued funds from the NLNG by the office of the auditor general of the federation, hence the need for a thorough investigation of the activities on the NLNG dividends account.”