Roads to get N600b from subsidy savingsSenate wants more facts on fuel importsTHE ongoing Senate probe of the fuel subsidy policy of the Federal Government has been described as not comprehensive enough to expose the real saboteurs of the scheme and those behind the derelict state of the nation's four refineries.Any probe of the corruption in the oil sector, according to former Petroleum Minister, Prof. Tam David-West, which excludes past military and civilian leaders as well as oil ministers in their administration from 1985 till date, is inconclusive.In an interview with The Guardian over the weekend, David-West declared that the list of companies importing petroleum products is not comprehensive andtherefore called for a probe of all past presidents and petroleum ministers since 1985 to determine what went wrong with the Nigerian refineries.He spoke as the Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Magnus Abe, disclosed that the investigation of the controversial fuel subsidy had not been concluded.Abe, who appealed to Nigerians to avail the committee with valuable information on the implementation of the policy, said the panel is working with the data provided it by the regulators of the industry.While the subsidy is yet to be removed, the Federal Government seems to have allocated the funds to sectors that would benefit from the abolition of the scheme.The hint on the government's plan came yesterday from the Works Minister, Mr. Mike Onolememen, who said N600 billion of the expected subsidy funds had been allocated to the road sector.Onolememen, who explained while the government stopped the use of kerosene in road repairs and construction, said the multinational firms handling the highways projects and not poor Nigerians were the major beneficiaries of the subsidy on the product.David-West, however, insisted that the Senate had not been availed the comprehensive list of all those involved in the petroleum products' importation, which the government claims it is subsiding.He said all former presidents and oil ministers should be probed because they had been accused of owning petrol filling stations across the country..'The list they (Senate panel) have published is a great step, but not the whole. Let them investigate every past president and oil minister after Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. Some of the oil ministers have petroleum stations. The list is not finished. It is a long way, yes, but it is not exhausted,' he said.David-West noted that the Senate investigation is a vindication that some interest groups that now import fuel to the detriment of most Nigerians, deliberately sabotaged the refineries. .He urged the government to stop deceiving the led that it is subsiding products consumed by them, adding that the government is attempting to curb corruption in the petroleum sector, which had led to fraudulent acquisition of wealth by a few individuals in the country..But Abe told The Guardian over the weekend that the disclosure of the names of some companies as major beneficiaries of the petroleum subsidy is not a foreclosure of the matter because the committee has not submitted its report to the Senate.Reacting to David-West's allegation, Abe said the list released by the committee was made available to it by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).'The Senate does not authorise subsidy. We confronted the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency and they gave us the list we are working on. If anybody has another list let himmake it available to us. The committee is yet to submit its recommendations,' he said..On the claim by the Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, that there is nothing the National Assembly could do about the fuel subsidy issue, Abe said he would not join issues with the governor, who might have spoken from his understanding of the 1999 Constitution.Onolememen told journalists in Uromi, Edo State after he was honoured by the Edo Central Senatorial District of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that he had ordered road construction firms to henceforth use bitumen emulsion for surface dressing because kerosene is for domestic use..The minister said this is one of the many reasons the government was insisting on removing subsidy from petrol. 'I discovered that one of the products the government is subsidising, which is kerosene, is never available to the poor and I found that in my sector that most road contractors, multi-national companies are the greatest beneficiaries of the subsidy on kerosene. I found out that for every one kilometre of road that our multinational contractors build, they use 26 tonnes of kerosene running into several millions of litres.'It is only recently, as recent as last month that I ordered an investigation and consequent on that, I said specification for surface dressing, MC 1, which our contractors use kerosene on, should be changed so that they should henceforth, use bitumen emulsion and in that way, we are going to free tonnes and tonnes of kerosene.'The minister said in 2011, the government added 1,000 kilometres to the national road network in terms of rehabilitation and reconstruction in the six geo-political zones.'Just imagine 1,000 kilometres of road consuming about 26,000 tonnes of kerosene, if you convert that to litres, you are talking of about 26 million litres and this is the product the government is subsidising. So, we are subsidising the multinational companies, which are the beneficiaries of this product hence the product is never available to the people who need it.'Onolememen revealed that the government had already set aside its share of about N600 billion from the subsidy when it becomes operational to complete major dual carriageways in the country.The highways to be repaired with the money include the Benin-Ore-Shagamu Road, the Abuja-Lokoja Road,the dual carriageway from Onitsha to Enugu and up to Port Harcourt. 'We will also use the subsidy to initiate and construct the second Niger Bridge and the Oweto Bridge,' he said.Onolememen further said the government plans to extend the dualism of the Abuja-Lokoja Road to Benin City in Edo State at the cost of N100 billion. 'Once this is completed, we will have succeeded in linking all the geo-political zones in the country,' he declared.Meanwhile, a member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Dakuku Peterside, has asked the government to protect oil-bearing communities in Rivers State from extinction.Peterside told journalists in Port Harcourt that it had become imperative for the government to address the issue of environmental degradation in the communities.'In the National Assembly, one of the things we mentioned was that some oil communities in Rivers State were at the risk of extinction if nothing was done to address the environmental challenges in the areas. We don't want to be abandoned like Oloibiri.
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