The House of Representatives on Wednesday mandated its Committee on Petroleum upstream to investigate alleged infractions in the operations of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) and the loss of $1.5bn national revenue.
The House resolution followed a motion sponsored by Hon. Ahmed Abu who called for investigation into the allegation.
‎While moving the motion, the lawmaker said that, “NPDC still appears to lack the capacity to compete favourably in the oil and gas industry and is reported to be consistently ceding its core activities to third party private entities without due procurement process in strategic alliance agreements that involve the provision of funds by those entities to carry out exploration and production activities on almost all the company’s oil fields, including the lifting of crude oil on behalf of the company, resulting in the NPDC’s inability to reconcile the revenue generated and the amount of crude lifted, leading to speculations about a loss of over $1.5bn revenue to Federal Government”
To this end, the lawmaker said that allegations of unethical and questionable actions in the company appeared to be hindering the attainment of its objectives 29 years after its establishment.
‎The lawmaker added that there were allegations that most of those third-party entities were newly registered companies with little or no technical experience, financial capability to carry out the duties and to meet the terms of Strategic Alliance Agreements.
He further alleged that the private entities were owned by cronies of members of the management of NPDC and other interested parties, adding that the firms had access to the company’s funds obtained from government’s appropriation.
In addition, he said that there were reports that claimed that the nation was losing billions of Naira daily from the outrageously inflated recurring expenditure on the operations of the NPDC.
The motion scaled through when the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, put it to voice vote.