Yemie Adeoye
6 November 2009
FOLLOWING the allegation of fraud levelled against the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over products importation and storage in private depots, the National Assembly yesterday charged President Umaru
Yar'Adua to remove the embargo placed on the sale of four refineries in Nigeria, while also canvassing outright sale of the facilities to save the downstream sector of the nation's oil industry.
Chairman, House Committee on downstream sector, Clever Ikisikpo, who stated this during a fact-finding mission of the House of Representatives on the allegation of N75 million fraud in the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), maintained that contrary to impression given to Nigerians by the government on the state of refineries, "none of the refineries is working."
The four refineries in Nigeria, Ikisikpo said, should be sold because they are now serving as a coduit pipe where hundreds of million naira have been wasted.
"We have been to the refineries and we have just wasted several hundreds million of naira on them. Contrary to impression in some quarters, none of them is working,"he stressed.
Fielding questions from newsmen, the lawmaker who led other members of his committee to Folawiyo depot and loading gantries, Atlas Cove facilities and oil installations belonging to Capital Oil and Gas NIgeria Limited, absolved the NNPC and PPMC of complicity in the allegation of fraudlent dealings.
"We are here on a visit to all these places as a follow up to inviatation which we have extended to the PPMC in realations to allegation published by a newspaper (not vanguard) that a cabal in the corporation was making N75 million every day on a fraudulent dealing," he said.
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