Nigeria: Looters tried to kill our report said Committee

Chairman of the House ad-hoc committee on the utilization of subsidy, Rep. Farouk Lawan at a press conference, yesterday, admitted serious pressure from government, marketers and other quarters on his committee for a favourable consideration during its investigation. Lawan at the briefing further asserted that there would be no need for fuel importation in a regime of transparency in the petroleum sector.
This came as apprehension mounted in the presidency and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP yesterday over the contents of the House of Representatives report on investigation of the utilization of the subsidy in the prices of petroleum products.
The apprehension based on the indictment of some major contributors to the party’s campaign coffers of 2011 heightened as the PDP summoned a meeting with the members of the House for April 30.
The party, however, dismissed the alleged anxiety saying that it welcomed the probe even as it admitted that only 12.75% of those indicted by the House report were contributors to the party’s campaign purse.
The apprehension nonetheless, criticism of the administration from opposition groups, lawyers, organised labour and civil society overflowed yesterday with calls on the administration to ensure full implementation of the report.
Tukur summons PDP House caucus meeting
The perceived apprehension in the PDP came as the national chairman of the ruling party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur yesterday requested a meeting with the PDP House caucus on April 30. More than N1 trillion was recommended by the House committee to be refunded to government treasury on account of the alleged fraud by government agencies and marketers involved in the subsidy scam.
Briefing House correspondents after yesterday’s sitting, the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Rep. Zakari Mohammed said, the recommendations of the Ad-hoc committee would be fully implemented to the letter.
Flanked by Lawan, Mohammed said, “we do not prosecute but we will ensure that the executive arm of government implements its recommendations to the letter. We will use all our legislative powers to ensure that after adoption, the report sees the light of the day.”
Asked how the legislative arm can achieve this, Mohammed said, “we are ingenuous, the executive arm will come to us also for certain things and we can use this report as a pre-condition and tell them that let this be done or we won’t do certain things that you are requesting us to do.”
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