The Senate’s panel on gas resources, which is investigating the N135 billion Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intervention funds given to some companies in the oil and gas sector, has threatened to alert anti-graft agencies to recover the money from defaulting beneficiaries.
  
 The committee, last week, had asked the beneficiary oil and gas companies to appear before it.  The 15 companies are Nigeria Independent Petroleum Company, Plc (NIPCO), Hyde Engineering and Construction Company, Pinnacle Oil and Gas, Dangote Oil Refinery, Lee Engineering and Construction Company, Nova Gas and nine others.
   
Checks revealed that in 2021, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources initiated the intervention fund in collaboration with CBN. The panel made its position known when the companies appeared before it, yesterday, to defend utilisation of the loans they collected. Lawmakers described as unacceptable, the fact that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and CBN were working at cross purposes on the project.
   
They also queried discriminatory disbursement of funds to the beneficiaries, wondering why some firms collected above the N10billion credit limit.
But speaking at the investigative hearing, representative of the Ministry of Petroleum, Oluremi Komolafe, told the panel, led by Senator Jarigbe Jarigbe, that the ministry was not aware of the disbursement of the fund.
   
Komolafe disclosed that 150 applications were received, 69 companies recommended, and currently 16 applications were being processed. She declared that the list of recommended companies was merely sent to the apex bank. “We wish to state that the list was not processed by the ministry,” she insisted.
  
 Acting Director, Project Finance at CBN, Alhaji Sahaad, said the apex bank only provided guidelines for disbursement of the loan to the beneficiary companies.
   
He said the disbursement was done by commercial banks, which he noted, should take responsibility for due diligence. He said: “The primary responsibility is for banks. If we send a proposal to the bank, they have to subject it to due diligence. CBN was never involved in the disbursement. What we do is to ensure that they give single digit interest and fairly long term tenor. The tenor for most of these facilities is seven to 10 years. Our role is to facilitate the loan.”
   
Senator Jimoh Ibrahim, however, faulted the submission of the CBN director, declaring that N135 billion could not have left the vaults of the commercial banks without knowledge of the apex bank.
  
 Senator Hussaini Babangida accused the Ministry of Finance and CBN of working at cross purposes, adding: “This isn’t good enough.” The committee established that the banks violated the credit limit of N10 billion as some of the companies received N15 billion and N20 billion.
   
The lawmakers equally established that in violation of the guidelines, companies like Dangote Refinery and Pinnacle Oil and Gas used the fund to finance their refinery and depot projects, respectively.
   
Jarigbe collected the records of the beneficiaries and the locations of their project sites for immediate investigations. He lamented that funds released under the gas expansion and intervention fund were inappropriately accessed.
   
He added: “The task of the committee is to ensure that the companies actually expended the funds on what they collected it for. The observation of the committee is that there are inconsistencies in the process and the committee may not hesitate to involve the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to recover the funds.”