The committee also discovered that several other firms engaged in the pre-shipment services deceived it with ‘doctored’ tax certificates submitted before the panel in violation of the Procurement Act.
Consequently, at the resumed hearing of the probe into the scam on Tuesday, the Committee chaired by Honourable Wole Oke vowed to handover the culprit companies to anti-graft agencies for prosecution.
The committee in addition summoned former Ministers of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Esther Nenadi Usman, former Head of Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsaye, former AGF, Jonah Otunla and all permanent secretaries of the Ministry of Finance since 1999 till date.
Oke disclosed that going by what the committee had seen in the last four weeks of investigative hearing, there was the need for those invited to appear in person to come and state what they knew about the issue in their own interest.
According to him, “It is alarming that a company that collected a contract of $120million only to pay N20,000 as tax to Federal Government; to say the least this is annoying and those are the things this investigative hearing is trying to right.
“We’ve documents submitted by companies that are in total variance with what FIRS, BPP, NSITF, PenCom and ITF gave us and you all know that our children and siblings benefit from ITF and if the right amount is not paid how will they get trained?” Oke wondered.
“Henceforth we’ll not hesitate to handover such companies to anti-graft agencies.”
Speaking on why former ministers of finance were summoned, Oke said “We invited them to come and defend themselves and let us know the various roles they played within the period of their stewardship.
“The essence of this invitation is to enable the investigative hearing have a balanced position on all issues.”
Earlier in her presentation, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun noted that “It’s pertinent to start by stating that the process of procurement of consultants for pre-shipment inspection and monitoring of crude oil and gas export from Nigeria, which the National Assembly was calling for investigation into allegations of abuse, breach and violation of the Procurement Act 2007, was still ongoing.”
According to her, “The ministry embarked on the procurement process for the appointment of pre-shipment agents and monitoring of oil and gas exports in February, 2016 based on BPP’s approved invitation for expression of interest duly published in two new national dailies and the Federal Tenders journal of February 8, 2016 soliciting expression of interest of bids from competent and reputable consultants for engagement as pre-shipment inspectors and monitors of oil and gas exports.
“A total of 67 companies were pre-qualified out of 166 companies that expressed interest, while 49 companies passed the quality based selection having scored 70 per cent mark and above.
“It’s relevant to reiterate that from the beginning of the procurement process till date, the ministry has been working closely with BPP, having obtained necessary approvals including advertisements, Request for Proposal (RfP) and approval to adopt quality based selection method to select the consultants.
“However, there is need to point the following: There was no procurement plan, because the NESS is statutorily self-financing and is not expected to be included in the annual budget, therefore budgetary is not applicable.
“The delay in concluding the procurement of the consultants was because of various procurement processes which include expression of interest, advertisement bid opening bid evaluation, request for proposal, request for Certificate of No Objection from BPP.”
At this point in her presentation, the lawmakers took her up and asked her to read out the relevant portion of the Act to the hearing of all present.
Oke told her that, “We totally disagree with you that because a project is self-sustaining it does not require a budgetary approval from NASS.
“Honourable minister, we are here to guide you properly so that you don’t make mistakes as even BPP is here to guide you, but there is nothing like a self-sustaining project that does not require approval because everything must be appropriated.”
and then