Senate President, David Mark, on Thursday said the National Assembly was guilty of not carrying out its oversight functions diligently before the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Lamido Sanusi, raised the alarm of missing $49.8 billion.
The ex-CBN governor had accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of failing to remit $49.8billion oil revenue to the Federation account. Following a reconciliation of NNPC’s account, he revised the unremitted sum downwards to $10 billion.
The senate president spoke following the consideration of the report of the Senate Committee on Finance that investigated the allegation in Abuja.
The report, which has generated much controversy was submitted by chairman of the committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi on May 28.
Mark commended the committee for presenting a courageous report based on facts that were presented to it.
He also commended the committee for its forthrightness in paying attention to details in the course of their investigation.
He, however, lamented that the NNPC did not follow due process by disbursing unappropriated funds for subsidy payments.
He vowed that no matter before the 7th Senate would be covered up.
Mark said: “At the inception of the 7th Senate, I did say emphatically that there is no issue in this country that we cannot discuss as respected and distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“If we have the courage to set up a committee nothing will stop us from taking the report of that committee and nothing will be swept under the carpet in this red chamber.
“I think what is glaringly from this report is that we are all guilty. If the committees expected to carry out oversight functions on the NNPC were doing their job very well, we wouldn’t have needed the Governor of Central Bank to ring an alarm bell before reacting”.
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