Criticisms against our committee’s work are baseless, says Farouk Lawan
You are not a member of the committee on oil and gas. How were you able to handle the probe in such a manner that there was no rancor? Yes, there is no doubt that in my 13 years as a member of the House of Representatives I was never a member of any […]
You are not a member of the committee on oil and gas. How were you able to handle the probe in such a manner that there was no rancor?
Yes, there is no doubt that in my 13 years as a member of the House of Representatives I was never a member of any fuel related committee. The closest I got was when I was Chairman of House Committee on Finance between 2003-2005 and when I was Chairman Appropriation Committee, between 2005-2007. Otherwise, I was never either chairman or member of any committee on oil and gas. You don’t necessarily have to be a member of a committee on any of these sectors before you do what is expected of you. I think what is required is the commitment, the passion and the desire to do the right thing.
To do the right thing is not difficult, as long as you make up your mind that you will not be distracted and you will be guided by your conscience. When the committee was constituted, I sat down with other members of the committee, made up of people with no background in the oil and gas sector. Out of the eight of us, six of them are new members in the House of Representatives, and we all made up our minds that the responsibility before the ad hoc committee is bigger than the House of Representatives. It is bigger than the National Assembly, it belongs to Nigerian people. For that, it was necessary for us to do the best we could do.
We also recognized our short comings. We had no credible expertise, consultants with regards to investigating the oil sector. But we also realized that getting expert consultants to help in what we were doing was going to be difficult, because most of these people who do business with the oil and gas industry are people whose charges may not be affordable to the committee. Secondly, they may not want to come and do any serious work with us. It’s their area of business. Once they help us to unmask what is happening there, it may as well affect them. They may not have the opportunities of doing business with them again. We realized all these short comings, but thank God we were able to get people who came to work with us with the needed commitment and passion to discharge the responsibility. Without the expertise, we were able to put our mind to it. That is why, in the course of the public hearing, most of the questions raised were based on presentations made by people and what those we invited said to us. From their presentation, we knew immediately that the numbers didn’t add up. It was quite a challenge, but we were able to conduct ourselves and discharge the responsibility with commitment to the best of our abilities.
From your investigation, was there any pattern to show that someone was in control of the massive fraud or people are just committing the fraud it at various levels?
You know the oil industry we investigated is a very big and complex one. Our investigation was based on one aspect of the kind of things that are happening in that sector. There are windows we have seen through the rots even deeper than the one we have investigated. From Day One, we established the ground rule to keep our eyes on the subsidy issue not to get distracted. There were times when we veered off to investigate other areas, particularly the crude oil thing But we tried to limit ourselves to the main issue. That is the subsidy. But, at least, it has opened our eyes to things happening in the industry. However, we only limited ourselves to the responsibility given to us and that is the subsidy issue. You know, it is a big industry, you cannot say there is an individual or group that is controlling the fraud.
Everybody was just doing its own thing in the industry. If you read our report, we found that the PPRA system of granting license was how import license were given in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Anybody without any background in the oil and gas business could just walk in and walk out with license to import and at the end of the day get a lot of money. You get a company with share capital of N100,000 and within a couple of weeks or months you collect huge sums of money. The NNPC played a very key role authorizing the process, particularly in its supervising role. These helped to sustain the level of corruption that is going on there and it has been going for a long time.
Do you think this money running into trillions that has been misapplied can be paid back into the coffers of government?
Definitely. Why not? It will be paid back. The ad- hoc committee was charged with the responsibility of investigating the sector to bring out the facts and that we have done. What is left is for the House of Representatives to adopt the recommendations and after that it is left for the relevant authority to implement it and make sure the right thing is done.
Do you think when it gets to the House, will not bow to influence from oil marketers or even from government, to sabotage the report?
In the course of the investigation, we have been asked these question severally, but let me say that we have been asked to investigate and come out with a comprehensive report which we have done. The second question is that when the report is out, will the House have the courage to adopt it? But I must say the House of Representatives which I know, the Seventh Assembly, will not shy away from this responsibility. For instance, this is the same House which refused all forms pressures, temptations and arm twisting to elect its own leaders, who were not anointed by anybody outside the House of Representatives. So if they have the courage in the face of all the temptations to deliberate on matters that concern Nigerians, I cannot see that same House rejecting or compromising on report from a committee it set up. The recommendations will go a long way to sanitize the sector. I’m inclined to say no amount of pressure to compromise on it will work. The ad-hoc committee will resist that.
What measures did you put in place to achieve the success on the subsidy probe?
From day one, we decided to be committed to the responsibility. We also decided to invite anybody that we thought will help our investigation. We invited heads of relevant agencies and individuals, anybody that has anything to do with the subsidy and we considered important to the probe. We requested them to supply us with relevant documents that helped us to arrive at our findings.
There are people who are not happy with your committee because you did not consult them before you came out with your report on the subsidy probe. Are you not afraid they might sabotage the report?
I don’t know anybody we should consult before writing our report. We conducted an investigation, we invited virtually anybody who has anything to do with the subsidy, the records are there for anybody to see and fortunately, the whole thing was done live. Nigerians know that those who were supposed to be invited were invited. They appeared, made presentations, and individuals like Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakhoba, Engineer Tukur, Gaius Obaseiki and so many other people, were invited. They came and shared their opinions. So if any faceless group is saying we did not consult them before writing our report I think its baseless.
The sector we investigated is one where the powerful, most influential and rich people in the society have interest. If we did what we did the way we did it with commitment and determination and come out with our report, we have done what we are expected to do. We are not under any illusion that these people will fold their hands and allow us to do our job. They went to the media, they tried in other ways to distract us from discharging the responsibility given to us. They tried to create division in the House to ensure we didn’t succeed in our investigation, but, of course, it didn’t work. Now that the report is out and some people’s interest are affected, some individuals tried to hide under some faceless group to do something that may affect our personal integrity in the House of Representatives. But people should not forget that we conducted a public hearing. It took almost three months to complete the exercise. Nobody in the country came out to say we did something contrary to anything that is proper, in terms of ensuring objectivity and credibility of the exercise.