The Senate committee probing the rehabilitation of the country’s four refineries has threatened to demand for dismissal and trial of senior officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, (NNPCL) and other relevant agencies for shunning its invitation.
Chairman of the Committee, Senator Isa Jibrin issued the threat on Wednesday following the failure of the senior executives of the NNPCL and other agencies to appear before it.
The agencies, he said, were those involved in the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) projects of refineries.
Some of the agencies whose chief executive officers failed to turn up at the session but sent representatives included NNPCL; Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA); Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and others.
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The senator noted that from 2010 till date, over N12 trillion has been spent on the rehabilitation of the refineries, yet none of them was functional.
He said, “We will ask for a refund and dismissal of all the chief executives involved in the Turn Around Maintenance.”
Jibrin said that for weeks, they have been asking for documents, which have not been given by the oil companies, a development that created suspicion.
“We sent them an invitation more than two weeks ago requesting for documents and the documents have not been released after two weeks. So, we want the chief executives to be present.
“More worrisome is that between 2010 and 2020, the sum of N4.8 trillion was said to have been spent as operational expenses.
“How do you incur operational expenses that have to do with purchase of raw materials and similar expenses on factories that are moribund? How do we come about operational expenses? We need to know.
“These are issues that Nigerians want to know; they want solutions to all these leakages. We know they are leakages. Whether you accept it or not they are leakages and they are all forms of compromise within your various establishments.
“We know and we will not hesitate to escalate it to the highest possible level, including the possibility of refund and outright dismissal of some of the heads of some of these agencies and possibly go to jail,” he said.
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