Elombah.com
16 January 2012
President Jonathan yesterday directed the minister of petroleum to investigate the importation of fuel, payment of subsidy and determine "any incidence of malfeasance, fraud, over-invoicing, and related illegalities”; all payments wrongly paid for necessary action. Consequently The Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Allison Madueke said she has written the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ibrahim Lamorde, inviting him to begin “forensic investigations” into the subsidy payments.
It is remarkable that Nigerians would be learning about the massive corruption in the oil industry over these years and there had never been anything done about it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The Government of Goodluck Jonathan was unable analyze and substantiate how the amount of the fuel subsidy ballooned or skyrocketed from the earmarked amount of N240b or between of N300-N500b in the last four years, to the so called N1.3tr fuel subsidy (by end of October 2011) - interestingly, the amount shot up and added an extra N700 billion under President Goodluck Jonathan' s administration.
Thanks to the fuel subsidy removal uprising, both the government and the people have agreed that the process and system of subsidy payments are corrupt and fraught with fraud. So the question is why this government is not as anxious to investigate and charge all those found to have abused the system as it is determined to remove the subsidy. Where has the EFCC been?
How come that EFCC has spent 10 years of its existence without any attention being paid to this sector and to these horrendous levels of graft in the fuel subsidy regime? This would pose a puzzle to you if you did not know EFCC well enough. But some of us do.
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