CBN Fund: Senate Threatens To Order Gas Companies’ Probe

The Senate Committee on Gas Resources probing the N135bn Central Bank of Nigeria Gas Intervention Fund has said it will invite anti-graft agencies to join in the ongoing investigation.

The panel gave the threat when the affected companies, numbering 14, appeared before it on Thursday to defend the utilisation of the CBN loans they collected.

The lawmakers described as unacceptable, the alleged lack of synergy between the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the CBN on the project.

They also queried the discriminatory disbursement of the funds to the beneficiaries and wondered why some firms collected more than the N10bn credit limit.

The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe, collected the records of the beneficiaries and the locations of their project sites for immediate investigations.

Jarigbe lamented that the funds released under the gas expansion and intervention fund were inappropriately accessed.

He said, “The task of the committee is to ensure that the companies actually expended the funds on what they collected it for.

“The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds. Some of the beneficiaries did not follow the guidelines. For instance, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is not even aware that the funds have been released.

“The guidelines stated clearly without ambiguity that they are supposed to do evaluation at the ministry before the list of the qualified ones would be sent to the CBN for them to access the loans but that was not done properly.

“We have also discovered that some of the companies do not have anything on ground since they got the loan.”

“The committee would investigate all the observations and work on them and let Nigerians know the true position of things,” Jarigbe added.

However, the Legal Adviser to one of the beneficiaries, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, Mathew Agbadon, lamented the publication made by the committee had given the company negative publicity.

The Director of Gas in the ministry, Oluremi Komolafe, told the Committee that the Ministry was not aware of the disbursement of the fund even though it partnered with the CBN on the scheme.

She added that 150 applications were received and 69 companies were recommended and presently 16 applications were being processed.

She said none of the firms whose applications were being processed made the list of the beneficiaries of the scheme.

Some of the firms that claimed that they had no business with either the ministry or the CBN were rebuked by the committee.