A shocking revelation emerged yesterday which indicted the Ministry of Petroleum Resources of spending without implementing, the sum of N500 million it received in the 2013 budget for the sensitisation of Nigerians on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
Details given by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mr Danladi Kifasi, who represented the minister at yesterday’s budget defence of the ministry before the Senate Committee on Gas, suggested the apparent diversion of said sum.
Kifasi said he could not explain the details of the expenditure because he was new to the ministry as he was posted in August, last year.
He said from the records he met at the ministry, the N500 million was expended on radio and television jingles, newspaper advertisements, monitoring vehicles etc without going into details which he couldn’t provide evidence for.
Drawing the attention of other lawmakers on the committee to the transaction, Senator Bello Tukur wondered why the ministry got itself involved in the PIB campaign despite the presence of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which had been the parastatal driving the bill.
But the ministry’s Director, Public Relations and Press, Mr. Kingsley Agha, said the ministry was not actually given the opportunity to explain the details of the expenditure.
He said there were evidence all over the country that the fund was used for the mounting of bill boards in strategic locations in the major cities of the country as well as proof that part of the funds were used for radio and television campaigns.
The sum of $3.16 billion was allocated to the ministry for capital projects for gas infrastructure in the 2013 budget, out of which $1.7 billion was released to the ministry.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Nkechi Nwogu, while inquiring on the progress made by the ministry in the area of gas infrastructure development asked “somebody should tell this committee what you did in the area of gas infrastructure and development in 2913.”
Responding, Kifasi said “on the part of the ministry, absolutely nothing was done on gas infrastructure development because we do not have the technical capacity to go into the construction of gas pipelines.”
