…Agency can’t account for 15kobo/litre charge
Federal
lawmakers were shocked yesterday when they learnt that the Petroleum Products
Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) spent N5.72 billion as salaries and
allowances on just 249 staff in 2012. More disturbing was the agency’s
inability to account for the 15 kobo it collects on every litre of petrol. The
money is deployed for “administrative charges,” said PPPRA Executive Secretary,
Reginald Stanley, who was at the National Assembly to defend the agency’s
budget. The National Assembly Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources
(Downstream) frowned at the 15 kobo charge, insisting that the fund is unknown
to the National Assembly.
These
figures were unveiled before the joint committee chaired by Senator Magnus Ngei
Abe, who stopped the budget defence session when the PPPRA could not
immediately produce documents to back the N5.725 billion expenditure profile of
the agency. A breakdown of the wage profile submitted to the joint committee
is: Basic salary-N2,167,702,293, regular allowances -N2,130,836,029,
non-regular allowances-N1,153,044,623, NHIS-N113,874723, pension-N160,462,867.
The
total is N5,725,920,535. Lawmakers were also stunned when the agency could also
not produce documents to justify its Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) and the
administrative charge. Earlier, Abe warned that the National Assembly would no
longer condone extra-budgetary spending from any ministry, department and
agency (MDA).
He
insisted that any public institution under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources
must not spend any fund unless it is appropriated by the National Assembly.
“What I want to bring to our attention is the attitude of some of our operators
in the sector, who always think that except appropriations are drawn directly
from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, they are not accountable to parliament for
it.
I
want to make it very, very, clear that except the money that you get from your
father’s farm or your grandfather’s farm is spent, any amount that comes
through you, or to you is expended through any agency as part of the public
responsibility is subject to review by the people of Nigeria and the National
Assembly that represents the interest of the people of Nigeria.
“So,
nobody can receive money on behalf of the Nigerian people, spend it on his own
behalf without reference to the National Assembly. I say it in particular
reference to those agencies that are by law allowed to generate and make their
own expenditure, noting that those expenditures that are not drawn directly on
the national budget must also come here and be approved by the parliament and
except it is approved, nobody should spend any money or disburse any fund that
is not pre-approved by parliament.
“So,
if that had been going on in the past, I believe that this meeting today, we
should put a final stop to it; it shouldn’t happen again. I want all of us to
take that into consideration,” Abe said. Meanwhile, the managements of the
Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries shunned a scheduled budget defence
before the National Assembly yesterday.
No
representative of the refineries showed up to defend their 2013 budgets and the
proposed $1.6 billion allocation for the much-needed Turn Around Maintenance
(TAM).
Source:
Sun
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