House of Representatives has asked the Nigerian Navy to provide detailed records of vessels that imported petrol and exported crude oil from 2017 till date.
The Navy is to also provide details of the owners of the vessels, the importers, exporters, delivery ports as well as the quantity of products.
The ad-hoc committee of the House probing petroleum products subsidy regime from 2017 to 2022 also asked the Navy to supply details on vessels that were arrested, the owners 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 lessons learnt of the Nigerian Navy, Rear Admiral E Ogaula, who represented the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, had told the committee that it is only information passed to them by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) 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. Sometimes 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 is the one sent by NNPC,” he said.
Members of the committee were displeased that the Navy should rely on the NNPC for such information.
The House spokesman, Hon. 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. I know the Navy has a record of every tanker coming or going out that has products that have to do with oil and gas.”
Another member, Mark Gbillah, said they were taken aback by the response of the Navy.
The committee gave the Navy one week to provide the details it demanded.
