Ademola Adeyemo looks at the controversy that surrounded
the report of the Mallam Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Revenue Special Task
Force (PRSTS), submited to President Goodluck Jonathan last Friday
Although it was not the only report that was submitted to President
Goodluck Jonathan last week, but the report of the committee led by
former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, attracted national attention due to the attendant
drama and controversy.
Early this year, the Federal Government had set up three committees
on different aspects of the operation of the country’s petroleum
industry.
While Ribadu chaired the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force (PRSTS),
those of Governance and Control Task Force, tasked with designing a new
corporate governance code for ensuring full transparency, good
governance and global best practices in the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) and other oil industry parastatals had Mr. Dotun
Sulaiman as its chairman and the National Refineries Committee was
headed by Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu with Mallam Yusuf Ali as alternate
chairman. The panel was charged with conducting a high-level assessment
of the nation’s refineries and recommending ways of improving their
efficiency and commercial viability.
But even before presenting its report, the work of the Ribadu
committee was dogged by controversy as a result of the leakage of the
panel’s report as reported by the International News Agency, Reuters.
The last straw was the drama that attended the presentation of the
report last week at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa,
Abuja, when two members of the committee, Mr. Steve Orosanye, who was
the deputy chairman of the Task Force and Mr. Bernard Oti, openly
disagreed with the panel chairman on the authenticity of the report.
But not many people expected the fate that befell the work of the
Ribadu panel as much hope was hinged on the committee because of the
reputation and pedigree of the members. Beside, Nigerians were
enthusiastic about the report which is expected to proffer last
solutions to the problem of petroleum subsidy regime and oil industry in
general.
The choice of Ribadu as the chairman of this important committee did
not come as an accident, he was carefully chosen for the task given his
pedigree as the former head of the anti-corruption agency. Due to his
reputation as incorruptible young police officer, former President
Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him as the chairmanship of the EFCC in 2003
and reappointed him in 2007, as well as promoting him to the position of
Assistant Inspector General of Police.
A lawyer, Ribadu studied law at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. He
also earned a Master of Laws degree from the same university. He is a
TED Fellow and a Senior Fellow in St. Antony’s College, University of
Oxford, UK.
Under his leadership, EFCC achieved about 270 convictions. Including
his former Inspector-General of Police, Mr Tafa Balogun, who was
convicted, jailed and made to return billions of naira under a plea
bargain.
Ribadu’s achievements in the EFCC included the de-listing of Nigeria
from the FATF List of Non-Cooperative Countries & Territories,
admission into the prestigious Egmont Group and the withdrawal of the US
Treasury FINCEN Advisory on Nigeria, making EFCC the foremost
Anti-Corruption Enforcement Agency in Africa and also enhanced Ribadu’s
reputation in the world as a respected anti-corruption crusader.
Ribadu’s reputation will not be completed without mentioning his
rejection of $15 million bribe offer from former governor of Delta
State, James Ibori.
However, the nation was jolted last week when the Ribadu Panel report
which is yet to be submitted to the president was leaked to Reuters.
According to the confidential report, a total of $183m in signature
bonuses paid by oil companies to the federation is missing.
Beside, the report said Nigeria may have lost $29billion in the last
decade in the sweet-heart gas deals with major oil companies, such as
Shell and Total, just as crude oil theft is reaching an alarming level
of 250,000 barrels daily at a cost of $6.3billion per year.
The report however confirmed the saying in many quarters that in deed
corruption as a cankerworm has eaten deep into the Nigeria’s oil sector.
During the fuel subsidy crisis, a report from the National Assembly
panel had revealed that Nigeria has lost $6.8 billion since 2009,
through a fuel subsidy programme, designed in part to keep petrol prices
low, is rife with corruption. According to the committee report,“If the
PSF (Petroleum Support Fund) scheme was properly managed, this sum of
1.07 trillion naira ($6.8 billion) would have been available to the
three tiers of government for budget enhancement.”
The report detailed what has long been suspected in Nigeria oil
industry, describing a lack of accounting, overpayments, wilful
disregard for regulations and outright incompetence in managing the
programme.
Quoting the report of the 17-member task force, headed by Ribadu,
Reuters said the146-page document provides new details on Nigeria’s long
history of corruption in the oil sector, which has enriched its elite
and provided the oil majors with hefty profits while two thirds of the
people live in poverty.
The report concluded that oil majors - Shell, Total and Eni - made
bumper profits from cut-price gas, while Nigerian oil ministers handed
out licences at their own discretion. This, while not illegal, did not
follow best practice of using open bids. Hundreds of millions of dollars
in signature bonuses on those deals were also missing, Reuters
reported.
The report alleges that international oil traders sometimes buy crude
without any formal contracts, and the NNPC had short-changed the
federation of billions of dollars over the last 10 years by selling
crude oil and gas to itself below market rates.
The report also said foreign oil firms had outstanding debts. For
example, Addax, now a unit of China’s state-owned Sinopec, owes Nigeria
$1.5 billion in unpaid royalties, part of a $3 billion black hole of
unpaid bonuses and royalties owed by oil bonuses.
Shell owes Nigeria’s government N137.57 billion ($874 million) for gas
sold from its Bonga deep offshore field, the report said, while oil
majors owed $58 million between them for gas flaring penalties. They
were also not adhering to newer higher fines.
The report also revealed that Nigeria was the only nation to sell all
its crude through international oil traders rather than directly to
refineries, adding that such trades were often opaque.
It said some international oil traders who were not “on the approved
master list of customers” had been sold crude oil “without a formal
contract” so little could be obtained about the details of these deals,
which can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“This logically will serve to reduce margins obtainable on sale of
crude oil,” the report observed, said there are no informal contracts
and there is “an official tender put out every year,”
NNPC gets an allocation of 445,000 bpd of crude oil to refine locally
but has been selling its allocation at cut-down prices, a practice which
cost Nigeria $5 billion in potential revenue between 2002 and 2011, the
report said.
It said that Oil ministers between 2008 and 2011 handed out seven
discretionary licences but there is $183 million in signature bonuses
missing from the deals, the report said
The Ribadu committee further recommended that NNPC be re-organised or
scrapped, an independent review of the use of traders to be set up, and a
transparency law that should be passed requiring oil companies to
disclose all payments made to Nigeria. The leaked report however
attracted reactions from some quarters alleging that government was
trying to cover up the report in order to protect some culprits.
However before the submission of the report, some members of the
collation sub –committee, charged with acting as the secretariat that
would collate and harmonise the task force’s work into a report, alleged
that the group was still receiving reports from various committees when
the task force’s draft report was submitted to the petroleum resources
minister and subsequently leaked to the press.
A member of the committee who spoke under anonymity said many members
of the sub - committee whose assignment it was to collate the report
were shocked to learn that Ribadu had submitted a report to the minister
because no such report had been produced by them.
The source revealed that even as at the time the Jonathan ordered
that the final report be submitted last week following the controversy
attending the leaking of the draft to the press, the sub – committee was
still receiving reports from other sub committees and had not come up
with even a draft.
He said even if the draft was ready, it would still had to be reviewed
by all members of the task force before a final report is agreed upon.
It was also gathered that members of the task force were divided on
key issues from the very beginning. A source who would not want to be
named said that there was a feeling that government had dictated some
“no go areas”, aspects of petroleum revenue that the government did not
want to be scrutinised.
It was also gathered that Ribadu and Steve Oronsaye, the vice chairman,
had serious disagreements over the scope of the task force’s work and
modalities for undertaking its assignment.
The source said that the divisions in the ranks of the members created
so much distrust that some persons refused to work or cooperate with
others, so that at times different sub committees that should worked
together did not know what the other was doing.
According to our source, Ribadu may have quietly drafted a report with
the help of trusted members of the task force and leaked it to the press
to stop it being doctored or toned down.
It was also learnt that some members did not want certain damaging
findings to be included in the final report. They argued that including
such sensitive findings in the report could be injurious to oil industry
stability, even national security, and thus counter - productive.On the
other hand, Ribadu and some other members had insisted that the final
report should be a true reflection of the task force’s findings and that
nothing should be excluded.
It is believed that Ribadu might also have received pressures from some
political quarters and business interest and that to save his
integrity, he decided to leak the full report, including the most
damaging aspects to the press.However, the drama peaked last week during
the submission of the report as two members of the committee
dissociated themselves from the report submitted by Ribadu.
First to raise objection was Orosanye who said: “When I joined the
committee, I made certain observations. And if the process is flawed,
the outcome cannot be implemented. The process is flawed. And the report
is a knee-jerk reaction. I don’t even know what the report contains.”
Also another member of the committee, Mr. Bernard Oti supported
Orosanye, saying “from the onset, I was very clear that we are not
following the right procedures. And so, I am not persuaded to be part of
the work being submitted.”
But the acting secretary of the committee, Mallam Sumaila Zubairu rose
in defence o the process, stated that both Orosanye and Oti joined the
committee very late. Zubairu said when the final draft of the report was
prepared; they attacked it, submitting that it was too harsh. Orosanye
rose again in defence of his stance, stating that actually, “some of the
figures in the draft report were unreconciled figures.” He added that
if the final report was not ready, there was no reason it should be
submitted.
At this point, Ribadu cut in saying “I was not expecting this
development. The task force was set up in February. Most of the members
abandoned what they were doing and we worked for three months. Steve
(Orosanye) never participated in any of the meetings for this work. And
during the course of the committee work, Steve became a member of the
board of the NNPC. And Mr. Oti became a director in NNPC. They opted to
remain as members of the committee. By the time they have been appointed
as board member and director, they ought to have resigned. They
didn’t.”
Ribadu also explain that his committee’s report in circulation was the same as what was submitted to the president.
He said “There is no difference and you can see clearly what happened.
We work for our country and we work for our people and stand by what is
the truth. Nothing can change that. What we said is exactly what we have
produced,” he said
But sensing danger concerning the report, President Jonathan called
for truce he said “I am not surprised there are disagreement. It is
about money. There are some lapses and probably not everyone agreed.
What I will advise is that any member who have certain issues or
observations should write them directly to me through the Chief of Staff
or the Honourable Minister of Petroleum.”
Jonathan assured Nigerians that his government has no interest in
hiding anything, imploring the media and civil society groups to help in
dispelling such insinuations. He stated that if the finding of the
committee border on corruption or outright stealing, such aspects of the
report will be forwarded to the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC).
ThisDay
