Fuel subsidy: Oando, AA Rano, others deny receiving payments

Oando Plc, AA Rano, Sahara Energy Resources, Hyde have all denied involvement in fuel subsidy payments before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating subsidy regime.

The oil companies said they only lifted crude oil and were not part of the subsidy payment by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd.

The representatives of the companies took turns explaining contract deals with the NNPC Ltd. in Abuja after being quizzed by the lawmakers.

The chairman of the committee, Mustapha Aliyu, said some oil companies were in attendance to explain their role in the deal with the Nigerian NNPC Ltd.

Aliyu, who read a list containing the name of the individual companies, explained that a communication from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), on the request of the committee, came back without any information on the affected companies.

He said the committee would write to the embassies of the companies which he said were mostly expatriates to provide the details of the profiles.

Aliyu said there would be questions to answer, adding that the committee wrote to CAC, requesting the commission to avail it with information on the following companies, about 57 companies.

He stated that the committee would also write to the commercial desks of their various embassies if they were expatriates so that they could have their full data.

In the bid to ascertain the veracity of the over N6 trillion allegedly spent on fuel subsidy as of the Second Quarter of this year, the committee unveiled plans to extend the ongoing investigation into the fuel subsidy from 2017 to 2022.

The committee investigating the subsidy payment between 2017 and 2021 chaired by Aliyu during the ongoing investigative hearing made public the lists of 23 unregistered oil companies that participated in the fuel subsidy regime between 2017 and 2021.

The details of the affected companies were contained in a memo sent by Corporate Affairs Commission with Reference No: RGO/SU/VOL.5/2022/0248 dated Wednesday, July 13, 2022, to the Chairman, Special Ad-hoc Committee on petroleum products subsidy regime.

The Star