The House of Representatives will, on Wednesday, commence investigative hearing into the petition against the implementation Committee of White Paper on the Commission of Inquiry into the alienation and sale of Federal Government landed property from inception to date levelled against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The investigative hearing was initiated by the House Committee on Public Accounts chaired by Hon Wole Oke.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) had in 2005 approved guidelines for the sale of Federal Government houses across the country, including 700 property located in Lagos State, which was eventually sold on a commercial basis to the highest bidders
Also expected to appear before the Committee are; accounting officers of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Nigerian Electricity Liability Management Company (NELMCO)/GTE; Petroleum Equalization Fund (Management) Board, Presidential Implementation Committee; and Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).
The Committee is also expected to hold separate investigative into the audit report issued by the Auditor General of the Federation (oAuGF) against National Oil Spill Detection and Response (NOSDRA) between 2014 to 2018 as well as audit queries against Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) between 2015 to date.
I would be recalled that the Senate had on the October 27th 2010 after the investigative hearing the sales of government property approved the scrapping of the Presidential Implementation over allegation bothering on non-remittance of N1.2 billion accrued from the sale of the property in Abuja and Lagos respectively.
The Senate report further alleged that: “The PIC lodged over N80 billion with various banks, the PIC testified that the Accountant-General of the Federation granted it approval to deposit the said sum at two per cent interest rate but the Accountant General denied giving any such approval.
“Instead of fixing the lodgements at between five per cent to 10 per cent per annum, the PIC officials had under the table deal with the banks, such that the lodgements were fixed at two per cent interest, while the PIC officials had the difference paid to them as gratification.
“Preliminary investigation by our financial consultant revealed that N1,236,074,517.00 payable to the Federal Government is already missing,” the report stated in part.
In 2004, the Federal Government also approved the sale of its facilities built by some MDAS including; Nigerian Army, Nigerian Police Force, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Housing Authority (FHA), Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), defunct Nigerian Airways and Nigerian Shipping Council Line.
