Senate probes NNPC, MDAs, others over unremitted funds

Senate has said it would commence probe of the 2014 audit report presented by the Auditor-General of the Federation, Samuel Ukura, to the National Assembly.

The report, which uncovered over N3.374 trillion misappropriated funds by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), also traced $236 million proceeds from sales of gas to Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG).

Senate spokesperson, Aliyu Abdullahi, insisted that the query issued by the auditor-general was not an indictment.

According to Abdullahi, the Public Accounts Committees at both legislative chambers will soon swing into action over the report by investigating the accounts of agencies concerned.

This, he said, was with a view to recommending appropriate sanctions against agencies and public officers involved, if found culpable.

“The auditor-general is raising a query, it is not an indictment. So, when he raises his queries, the essence of the Public Accounts Committee is to invite those parties involved in the query and through the instruments of their own work, investigate all the issues by seeking for clarification and at the end of the day, where they have infractions or infringement on certain procedures, they mete out appropriate sanctions as stipulated by extant rules and regulations.

“The 8^th Senate has chosen to be different as we have stated severally since we came on board and for which we came up with our legislative agenda to make us different from the past because we are in the season and period of change and we want to seriously key into that,” he told journalists on Tuesday.

A breakdown of the irregular payments from special funds also showed that N36.4 billion was released to the Office of the National Security Adviser for the rehabilitation and construction of dams rather than to the Federal Ministry of Water Resources; N2.9 billion spent on procurement of hand sanitiser for schools and critical public places; N31.3 billion subsidy on fertiliser and youth empowerment in agricultural programmes, among others.

Speaking further, the Senate spokesperson pointed out that the 8^th Senate would not sweep the report under the carpet.

“We urge Nigerians to wait and see what we will make out of the investigation,” the lawmaker assured.