The House of Representatives Committee on Public Account (PAC) on Thursday walked out a delegation from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) from an investigative hearing over alleged financial irregularities in the department running into trillions of naira.
The committee frowned at the continuous failure of the Director/CEO, Mr Sarki Auwalu, to appear for the hearing which became necessary following queries raised by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
Some of the queries read “Department of Petroleum Resouces (DPR) collected the sum of ₦733,054,301, I73 but paid a net of ₦706,283,397,141.
“Review of documents relating to outstanding royalty, gas flare penalty, gas sales royalty and concession rental due from Oil and Gas Companies showed that the sum of US$ 3,214,022,999 was not collected by DPR as at when due.”
The Deputy Chairman of the committee, Rep. Abdulkadir Abdullahi (APC-Bauchi), at the hearing on Thursday, said that the committee had been receiving excuses from the CEO why he should not appear.
According to him, we just received the letter that he won’t be coming today and the submissions also.
“I am afraid, I do not think we should allow this appearance to go on because respect begets respect.
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“If the CEO won’t appear, he should have informed us earlier, and this is not the first time, you have been making excuses one after the other and today again it is the same old story.
“So am afraid, I want to insist that the CEO appears; these are not issues raised by us, they were raised by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation,” he said.
He said that legislator was elected, among others to be watchdogs over public funds but certain critical government agencies had formed it a habit to refuse the parliamentary summons.
According to Abdullahi, it is in your character to deliberately disrespect the parliament.
“I am afraid we can not continue,” he said.
The Chairman of the committee, Rep. Wole Oke (PDP-Osun), said that the committee was not happy to receive the response to the query raised by the Auditor-General on the day of the hearing.
According to him, we expect that you should have furnished this committee with these documents much earlier to enable us to read the same and form an opinion.
“We won’t be able to take you today; we want the CEO to appear before this committee, we are a friendly committee and very civil.
“We are mindful of the privilege out of 200 million Nigerians you gave the opportunity to serve you, to represent you,.
“So, we do not attack, oppress, intimidate people that appear before us, it is not in our culture.
“We speak to issues, facts and law; if the Auditor-General did not raise these queries, we will not invite you.
“We need to work in synergy to deepen the rule of law and make our country a better place.
“And the figure we are talking about is in the region of trillions of naira; the first query, the figures is over one trillion naira.
“So it is a very serious matter, I want you to see reasons with us and it is better for the CEO to cause appearance even if he will delegates you to speak to the matter, let him be here and say so,” he said.
The Head of Planing, DPR, Mr Johnson Makanjuola, who led the delegation tendered an apology on behalf of the CEO.
He explained that the CEO attended the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting with the minister on Wednesday.
He said that the CEO was given an assignment which required him to go back to the villa on Thursday.
“When we discovered that he won’t make it here today, we came to meet the chairman of the committee to explain to him that we will be bringing a letter on his behalf.
“So we tender an unreserved apology on his behalf and I plead that you listen to what we have to say.
“He is a new man on the seat, even if he is here, I will be the one to speak on the observations raised,” he said.
The committee, however, resolved that the CEO should appear in person unfailingly next week for the hearing.
