Editorial

Senate’s probe of N120bn CBN fund

Tribune Editorial Board
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LAST week, Nigeria’s Red Chamber, the Senate, invited 15 companies, including Dangote Oil Refinery, NIPCO Gas Limited and NIPCO Plc, to the National Assembly complex in order to explain how they spent over N120billion intervention fund disbursed to them by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In a memo addressed to the companies and signed by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Gas, Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe, the Senate indicated that the companies were beneficiaries of the disbursements from the Nigeria Gas Expansion Program (NGEP) Intervention Fund by the CBN. Interestingly, when the 14 affected companies appeared before it on Thursday, November 30, to defend the utilisation of the loans they collected, the Jarigbe-led committee threatened to involve anti-graft agencies to recover the money from defaulting beneficiaries. Its grouse was that there was no synergy between the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the CBN on the project. It also queried the discriminatory disbursement of the funds to the beneficiaries and wondered why some firms collected more than the N10bn credit limit.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe, said: “The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds. Some of the beneficiaries did not follow the guidelines. For instance, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is not even aware that the funds had been released. The guidelines stated clearly, without ambiguity, that they are supposed to do evaluation at the ministry before the list of the qualified ones would be sent to the CBN for them to access the loans but that was not done properly. We have also discovered that some of the companies do not have anything on ground since they got the loan.” And rather strangely, the Director of Gas in the ministry, Oluremi Komolafe, told the committee that the ministry was not aware of the disbursement of the fund even though it partnered with the CBN on the scheme. According to her,150 applications were received, 69 companies were recommended, while 16 applications were presently being processed. She added that none of the firms whose applications were being processed made the list of beneficiaries of the scheme.

To be sure, the legislature has the right to ask questions about developments in which public funds are involved, and especially against the background of insinuations that the disbursements were not done transparently. Since the claim that funds were disbursed to the said entities has not been contested, it is necessary to ask if the facility was made available to other firms or was based on preferential treatment and in circumvention of due process. Nigerians have the right to know what transpired in this case. Going by experience, the level of impunity with which the resources of the country are expended is staggering and should baffle all right-thinking Nigerians. This is why the Senate’s plan to probe the disbursement of N120 billion to the said companies and organisations by the CBN under the NGEP Intervention Fund cannot be bungled.

Still, this development provokes certain questions that go to the heart of how things are generally done in the country. For instance, why is it that the Senate, which ordinarily should have oversight responsibility over how resources are used, is now interested in probing such disbursements? Is it that there were no rules for such disbursements at the point at which they were made? Would the CBN have been permitted to disburse collective funds without any rules and merely according to the  whims of those involved? Unfortunately, the country had been treated to many spectacles in the past about legislators pretending to want to deal with recklessness in the use of appropriated funds without Nigerians being the wiser for it in the end.

The truth is that it would take a concrete, positive change of heart on the part of those in leadership positions in the country to be able to checkmate excesses and flagrant abuses, as it is difficult for anyone to call others to account where everybody is involved in the recklessness being complained about. Senators and legislators in general have a duty to help the country to oversee the way the country is governed by the other branches of government, such that if the governance processes have been characterised more by negatives, they should hold themselves responsible. Proper oversight over executive actions would help to ensure that things are done in line with rules and regulations. Unfortunately, the way the legislature has conducted its affairs, this basic expectation had seemed to be unattainable over the years. Over time, Nigerians have been subjected to the ugly spectacle of probes that led to nothing concrete in the long run and this is one reason they have become rather desensitised to news of probes and revelations of shady dealings in public affairs.

Nigerians can only hope that the plan to inquire into this particular disbursement will signal the readiness of the Senate to take the issue of oversight more seriously and ensure that all the ingredients about the disbursement are exposed for proper verification and appropriate punishment, where applicable, for those entities that are proven to have circumvented the rules.

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