Senate, yesterday, resolved to invite Group Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, to brief lawmakers on under recovery expenditures and the company’s position on subsidy removal by the current administration.

This came after the adoption of a motion on ‘Need to Investigate Controversial Huge Expenditure on Premium Motor Spirit under the Subsidy/Under Recovery Regime by NNPCL’.

The motion was sponsored by Chinwuba Patrick (Imo East).

The Senate also resolved to “mandate the Committee on Downstream Petroleum Sector (when constituted) to constantly monitor, scrutinise and approve Midstream and Downstream spending of the NNPCL; and

“Urge NNPCL, in conjunction with some major international oil companies in Nigeria, to form three different consortiums and build three refineries, one each, to stabilise our oil market, give value to our currency and stabilise our economy”.

Earlier, Chinwuba noted that the Federal Government, in its fight against corruption, bid to plug waste surrounding fuel subsidy, and end the controversial subsidy regime, on May 11, 2016, announced increase in fuel pump price from N87 to between N135 and N145 per litre.

He said at the inauguration of the current government on May 29, 2023, the President took a bold step to announce total removal of fuel subsidy, noting that the scheme “increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor”.

He said: “NNPCL, within the period of subsidy exit attempt, substituted the term ‘subsidy’ with ‘under recovery’ without any recourse to the National Assembly or supervision by any other arm of the government.”

He observed that “while NNPCL, within 10 years (2006 and 2015) claimed about N170 billion as under recovery, the same company, within 13 months (January 2018 to January 2019) claimed N843.121 billion as under recovery.