The Presidency yesterday said the Ribadu oil revenues committee failed to carry out a critical part of its assignment of data reconciliation and verification, thereby making its report defective and unenforceable. Presidential assistant on public affairs Doyin Okupe said the report was "jumbled and fumbled" as the committee itself placed an "obvious disclaimer" by saying it could not verify some of the data. A week ago, Ribadu submitted the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report, which uncovered large-scale fraud in the oil industry.
But the presentation was spoilt by disagreements between Nuhu Ribadu and committee member Steve Oronsaye, who said the report's conclusions were faulty. Ribadu accused Oronsaye of being compromised by a government appointment which he denied.
After the messy presentation session, opposition parties alleged plots to discredit the report in order not to implement its recommendations.
Yesterday, Okupe said at a news conference in Abuja that the committee failed in one of its major assignments as specified by the terms of reference.
He quoted one of the terms of reference as having mandated the committee to "work with consultants and experts to determine and verify all petroleum upstream and downstream revenues (taxes, royalties, etc.) due and payable to the Federal Government."
But he added that the panel failed on this one because Ribadu himself and the committee scribe said in the covering letter submitted with the report that: "The data used in this report was presented by various stakeholders who made submissions to the task force in the course of our assignment at various duties, which have been disclosed in relevant sections of the report. Due to time frame of the assignment, some of the data used could not be independently verified and the task force recommends that the government should conduct such necessary verification and reconciliations."
Okupe said this was an obvious disclaimer placed on the report by its own authors.
"The above paragraph which is an 'obvious disclaimer' issued by the committee on the entire report makes it impossible under the Nigerian laws to indict or punish anybody except the Federal Government fully verifies and reconciles the facts as recommended by the committee in its submission," he said.
Okupe described the report as "jumbled and fumbled" but added that "all the work to be done to completeness of the document will be done and a white paper will be issued and its recommendations fully implemented by this administration."
He accused Ribadu of encouraging "public disinformation deliberately calculated to overheat the polity and cause disaffection and opprobrium against the President for doing what is right, what is needful and profitable to the nation.
"We are aware that Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to a certain extent, advertently but definitely unfortunately has encouraged this negativism. For instance on his page on Facebook a while ago, he remarked that he resisted overtures to make him compromise the report and rather than doing so, he stayed on the side of the Nigerian people."
He said Ribadu's claim of overtures was false and challenged him to name people who attempted to compromise him.
"We respectfully enjoin Mallam Ribadu to be patriotic enough to name the proponents of this compromise," Okupe said.
Daily Trust attempted but could not get Ribadu's comments. His telephone line was not reachable, and he did not reply to a text message and email sent to him.
Daily Trust