*Withdrawal of N10bn from NHIS for probe
The Chairman, House Joint Committees on Finance and
Petroleum Downstream, Hon. Babangida Ibrahim (APC, Katsina), on Tuesday said it
had established that there's an existing fuel subsidy regime which is unknown
to the National Assembly.
As a result, he said a full-blown investigation
into the sources of funding for the subsidy scheme had commenced.
The House had on January 17 tasked the committee to find out what sources
of funding were being used to operate the subsidy regime when there's no
proposal for it in the 2018 budget.
He said the pricing template made available to it
by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) already indicated
landing cost for petrol is between N160/N170 per litre while the official price
remains N145 per litre.
Speaking at the maiden investigative hearing with
relevant agencies, he noted that there exists wide difference which is being
funded by the government.
However, the Minister of State for Petroleum
Resources, Ibe Kachiku; Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Maikanti Baru, and Minister of Finance, Mrs.
Kemi Adeosun, as well as the Executive Secretary of PPPRA all failed to honour
the committees' invitation.
The committee, therefore, resolved to write the
heads of agencies again to give them another opportunity to appear before it.
Ibrahim said it's evidently clear there's gap
between official and landing costs.
He suspended the interactive section to write
agencies for a full-blown public hearing on the matter.
Also yesterday, the House passed a motion mandating
its Committees on Healthcare Services, Finance and Anti-Corruption to
investigate the withdrawal of N10 billion from the account of the National
Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and report back within four weeks for further
legislative action.
The resolution followed a motion moved by Hon.
Chike Okafor on the need to investigate the illegal withdrawal of the sum of
N10 billion from the ‘Insured Persons’ Fund of the NHIS.
He noted that the fund made up of five percent
contribution by each insured person is maintained with the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) under the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy for the
administration of the scheme.
He added that withdrawal of monies from such designated
accounts under the TSA at the CBN by any government agency is based on request
of the Chief Accounting Officer of the agency.
Okafor said a recent oversight inspection of the
agency by the Committee on Healthcare Services revealed that two suspicious
withdrawals of N5 billion each, totaling N10 billion were made from the ‘Insured
Persons’ Funds account with the CBN on December 28, 2016, and January 11, 2018,
respectively when the Executive Secretary of the scheme was still under
suspension.
He said upon inquiry, the Executive Secretary
informed the committee that neither him or any staff of the agency made any
request for either of the two withdrawals, stating that the withdrawals were
authorised by Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, without the input of the
agency and in contravention of the laws and regulations governing such actions.
He argued that such practices, if not checked, would
erode public and international confidence in the scheme and make a mockery of
the anti-corruption stance of the present government.
Lawmakers frowned at the withdrawal and called for
thorough investigations as well as bring the culprit to book.
Okafor had already summoned relevant heads of
agencies to appear before his committee on the issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment