No record of crude oil sale for over 40 years - Bankole

Sulaimon Olanrewaju and Akin Adewakun, Lagos - 04.05.2008

Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, on Friday night, shocked the Lagos business community when he announced that despite being the sixth largest crude oil exporting country in the world, Nigeria has no record of crude oil sold in the last 40 years.

“There is no record anywhere in Nigeria, I say again, there is no record anywhere in Nigeria of how many barrels of crude oil have been sold at what price in the last 40 years,” he stressed.

Bankole, who was in Lagos for a roundtable discussion with the business community on how to make government policies work, added that, “ DPR (Department of Petroleum Resources) will give you a figure, Finance Ministry will give you a figure, CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) will give you a figure, all totally different.”

The speaker said that was part of the findings of the ongoing probe in the House. He, however, gave a ray of hope that things would begin to change as the legislative arm at the federal level was poised to ask the questions that would reveal all hidden things.

The speaker said that by asking the right questions, the House was able to discover the N450 billion unspent appropriation for 2007. “The executives initially told us it was N10billion. Then we asked questions and found out that it was more. We discovered varying figures until we got to N450 billion. We can begin to imagine what happened last year or year before the last or the one before that”, Bankole said.

He, however, added that “the probe embarked upon by the House was not targeted at anyone in particular, rather, it was meant to facilitate the realisation of President Umaru Yar’ Adua’s 7-point agenda.”

“Because power tops the president’s 7-point agenda, we decided to look into why efforts at making it work in the past failed. That is why we started the probe of the power sector. What we found out was that if there had been a periodic review of all projects and projections, we would not be where we are today”, the speaker said.