The House of Representatives has directed the Nigerian Navy to provide comprehensive details of vessels that imported petrol and exported crude oil from 2017 till date.
The Navy is also to provide details on ownership of the vessels, the importers, exporters, delivery ports as well as the quantity of products.
This was as adhoc committee probing petroleum products subsidy regime from 2017 to 2022, headed by Arc. Ibrahim Aliyu, continued its investigative hearing on Thursday, as it directed the Navy to provide details on vessels that were arrested, details of the ownership of such vessels, the agencies the vessels were handed over to, the content of the vessels, their current location, as well as the status of the contents of the vessels.
The Director of Lesson Learnt of the Nigerian Navy, Rear Admiral E Ogaula, who represented the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, had earlier told the committee that it is only information passed to them by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited that they record in their file.
“The Navy only assists the NNPC in ensuring that things work the way it is supposed to. It is not the lead in terms of tanker nominations and all these issues of oil lifting and so. It is information passed to the Nigerian Navy by the NNPC that we record in our file.
“Sometime NNPC might pass information and we record it and at the end of the day some of them are cancelled, some are not. The information we have which we have passed to you are the information sent by NNPC,” he said.
Members of the committee were displeased that the Navy should rely on the NNPC for such information.
House Spokesman, Benjamin Kalu, said, “We leave waterways under your care, therefore independent of what NNPC does, it is your mandate. To say you only rely on what is coming from NNPC does not inspire confidence in Nigerians who allow you to monitor what comes into the country”.
