How litigation frustrated House inquiry on $17bn undeclared crude involving IOCs CEOs
Deadlock can best be described as proceedings at the House of Representatives ad hoc Committee investigating $17 billion undeclared proceeds of crude oil and liquefied gas sales between 2011 and 2014 at the national Assembly yesterday.
The Committee had invited Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) for explanation, but their representatives generally declined giving answers to questions put to them citing prejudice.
Earlier the affected companies had failed to respond to queries on several undeclared payments on crude oil sold during the period under review that were traced to them.
Trouble started when Shell’s representative, Funmi Olafimihan, was asked to confirm a document containing a list of payments connected to her company but she declined comment.
According to her, “I can neither confirm nor deny the content of this document,” maintaining that the Federal Government had dragged Shell to court over the same matter, which her company has contested.
In her response, Joke Aliu who represented Agip, said though the company respects the powers of the House, it cannot speak on the issues raised by the committee as it is party to a court case instituted by the Federal Government.
In his ruling, Chairman of the committee argued that “It is the Executive that took you to court not the House of Representatives”.
“As a legislature, we have a responsibility to carry out our own duty. The Federal Government took you to court to recover a shortfall, to compel you to pay what you refused to pay. On the other hand, ours is to uncover corruption, to unravel how and why certain monies were paid into different accounts without proper documentation. Even the periods covered by the two issues were different.
“Being in court does not mean that the National Assembly cannot investigate such matters because the constitution is very clear on that. It is just sad that IOCs are using Nigerians to subvert our system,” Namdas contested.
