The House committee that investigated the oil subsidy submitted its report Wednesday with startling revelations of large-scale fraud of more than N1 trillion.
Also yesterday, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) called for the prosecution of individuals and organisations indicted in the report.
House spokesman, Zakari Mohammed, who spoke to newsmen in Abuja yesterday, said the House will deploy all machineries at its disposal towards ensuring that the report is not swept under the carpet by the federal government.
Also speaking, chairman of the ad hoc committee, Faruk Lawal, maintained that all their recommendations were implementable and issues raised can be addressed "if you have the will".
Lawal also disclosed that there were attempts by undisclosed government officials, oil marketers and other interested parties to truncate the investigation saying, "they tried to reach out to some of us but when that failed some of them did not come. There were so much pressure from government officials and marketers who wanted to reach us through some of our colleagues (members of the House of Representatives). If we had compromised we wouldn't have had the courage to ask them the questions we asked them."
While reacting to the revelations in a statement by the Acting General Secretary of the NLC, Comrade Owei Lakemfa, the congress described the revelations as a mere tip of the iceberg and called for further investigations.
It stressed that the outcome "which revealed the criminal looting of the nation's resources, is a vindication of the Nigerian people's protest on the issue."
It said if the government had encouraged local refining, the cost of PMS won't be as high as the old price of N65 per litre. It noted also that the massive looting of the subsidy funds and the corruption in the oil industry was responsible for the N97 per litre cost of PMS.
For instance, NLC said, the recommendation that the executive secretaries of the PPPRA from 2009 to date be probed, does not go far enough. "There is the need to probe the oil industry from the inception of civil rule after the rapacious military regimes had departed," the statement said.
.
Daily Trust