Fuel subsidy: Senate summons Okonjo-Iweala, Allison-Madueke, others

Posted by admin Latest Politics, Oil Politics, Women Politics Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

The debate on the removal of fuel subsidy gathered momentum yesterday as the Senate Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Appropriations and Finance formally summoned Ministers of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke and Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to appear before it.

The issue has also pitched a section of the northern Christians against the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), who the group accused of being insensitive to the plight of Nigerians.
Also, a member of the House of Representatives, Kamil Akinlabi (ACN, Afijio/Atiba East/Oyo West), lamented that government no longer enjoys the trust of the people due to the proposal.

Also summoned by the Senate was the Chief of Naval Staff, Rear-Admiral Ola Sahad Ibrahim. The top officials are to brief the lawmakers on the procedure for administering the subsidy.

The joint committee specifically invited the Okonjo-Iweala, who is also the Co-ordinating Minister on the Economy, to show up in the Senate on Thursday, November 3.
Other government functionaries invited are the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Austin Oniwon; Comptroller-General of Customs, Dikko Abdullahi; Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) and Managing Director of the Nigeria, Ports Authority (NPA).

On September 12, Senate, through its resolution on the investigation into the management of the current fuel subsidy, directed the joint committee to investigate the operation of the fuel subsidy scheme by the Presidency.
Chairman of the Petroleum Resources (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe, who heads the joint committee, explained to newsmen that Senate is inviting the government officials to brief them on the entire procedure for administering the subsidy; sources of the fund and why there had been an unprecedented rise in the quantum of subsidy in the latter part of the year.
Briefing newsmen in company with Appropriation and Finance Committee Chairmen, Senators Ahmed Maccido and Bassey Otu, Abe assured that the investigation would be transparent.

Asked why multi-national oil companies were not invited, he replied: “This invitation is not an invitation to public hearing; it is an invitation to government agencies to come and brief the committee.
“For a lot of us, this terrain of subsidy, we don’t understand it any more than you do. We need to get the basic foundation from those that are running the scheme, and that is why we are inviting them.

“We have not invited the multi-nationals because they cannot give us the perspective we want in this initial invitation but any of them that has a position and sends in its position in response to the invitation we have made to critical stakeholders to submit a memo will be invited to state its position.”
The oil subsidy probe is based on a motion by Senator Bukola Saraki, who urged the Senate to investigate the extra-budgetary spending of the fuel subsidy which has jumped from the approved N240 billion to over N1.5 trillion as at September 2011.

Meanwhile, some concerned Christians in the North have, however, kicked against the Federal Government’s planned removal of fuel subsidy, even as the 19 Northern states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter of CAN said it was yet to take a position on the subsidy.

In a statement issued yesterday and signed under the umbrella of Concerned Christians in the North (CCN), Secretary of the group, Yahuda Peter Marsa, said the concerned Christians were disturbed by the statement of the national president of CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, for allegedly endorsing the government’s move on the subsidy.

But Secretary of the 19 Northern states and the FCT chapter of CAN, Elder Saidu Dogo, disowned the group, saying, “we don’t know them, they are trying to do some funny things.”
But asked to state the position of Northern CAN on the proposed removal of fuel subsidy, Dogo said, “let government do a lot of sensitization about the subsidy to allow most Nigerians know more about it. But very soon, Northern CAN will make its position known on the subsidy.”

According to the concerned group, “the removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government is ill-timed and insensitive because it is an outright addition to the sufferings of the masses wherever they are and no matter their religions.
“The national leadership of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), under Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, did not act in consonance with the reality of the situation of things in Nigeria, by their hasty endorsement of government action on fuel subsidy.

“From their dispositions and body language, the CAN president is using the umbrella body of Christians in charting a different aspiration from what we used to know of the organization.
“We know how our parents and grand-parents worked under Northern Christian Association of Nigeria, which was formed on April 11, 1964, as a response to critical issues at that time; it was the same spirit that continued till August 27, 1976 when the Christian Association of Nigeria was established in Lagos. From then till now, it has been a pro-people’s association.

“For the CAN president, we wish to draw his attention that posterity is a strong scale in measuring all the actions of mortals and the rest of us, including him, are not free from it.
In a chat with newsmen yesterday Akinlabi lamented that as lawmakers, he and his colleagues were finding it difficult to convince their constituents to support removal of fuel subsidy.
Akinlabi said that the Federal Government has lost the confidence of the people due to its several inconsistencies on the issue of subsidy removal.

According to him, it was difficult to convince the people as government no longer enjoys the trust of the populace due to dashed hopes and aspirations.
“The removal of fuel subsidy has been the swan song of successive governments since the military era, and this is why people are finding it difficult to believe the argument put forward by government to defend the need to end fuel subsidy,” Akinlabi stated.

He said that his people are pointing to the late General Sani Abacha’s regime as the only administration which made good its promise to invest the proceeds of the subsidy into infrastructure, health and education through the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), headed by former military ruler, General Mohammad Buhari.
Meanwhile, a group, Yoruba Ronu Leadership Forum, has also criticized the statement credited to Mrs. Allison-Madueke over the take-off date for the subsidy removal.

In a statement signed by its Secretary General, Akin Malaolu, the group stated that the recent denial of the minister on the January 2012 take-off date ran contrary to the document sent to the National Assembly by the President.
“However, it does not matter to the people whether a date is fixed or not for petroleum subsidy removal, what the people are saying loud and clear is that the government should look in other directions for its transformation agenda.

“It is worrisome that the government does not have alternative measures to achieve its economic programmes that can quickly ameliorate the conditions of things nor brave enough to confront economic bandits that exist in the downstream petroleum sector,” the group said.

It also described the recent statements of General Manager of the Group Public Affairs, NNPC, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma, to labour leaders as ‘impolite and inappropriate’, saying government officials should be blamed for the ‘inaccurate facts and effects’ that have characterized the proposed fuel subsidy removal.

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