Reps probe PTDF, DPR, others

THE House of Representatives has setmachinery in motion for monitoring the finances and expenditure profiles of all the regulatory agencies in the petroleum industry in Nigeria.The new move by the House is aimed at curbing unlawful spending by the agencies through phoney contract awards, while limiting the expenses of the agencies to those approved by law.Indications to this effect emerged during an inaugural meeting between the House Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) and petroleum agencies, including the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA), on Friday.Against this background, the House resolved to investigate the revenue flow and the expenditures of the agencies in the past five years, with a view to detecting possible fraud bordering on illegal withdrawals by officials.Addressing the heads of the agencies during an interactive session, the committee chairman, Honour-able Ajibola Muraina, said the probe being instituted was in the best interest of the agencies, since it was meant to plug all loopholes in their expenses.Muraina, therefore, instructed the agencies to submit their statements of bank accounts, noting that members were eager to probe illegal deductions from their different accounts by the banks.The petroleum committee, however, requested all the agencies to submit detailed information on their revenue flow on yearly basis, list of capital projects that they had executed in the past five years, the sums of money they paid to contractors, the list of outstanding payments to be made, the list of abandoned projects and their levels of completion.The agencies were also to submit the maximum capacity which the law approved for them in terms of contract awards, while each of them were also to disclose their basic sources of income.
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