By Michael Agbaji
After several invitation by Senate Public account Committee to GMD NNPCL,on Tuesday the Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Company limited (NNPCL) Mr Bayo Ojulari appeared before the Committee.
The Chairman Senate Committee on Public account Senator Ahmed Wadada in his welcome address gave a run down on why his Committee invited NNPCL says, the components of the audit queries, Senator Wadada clarified that the N210 trillion is split into N103 trillion in liabilities and N107 trillion in assets—figures that must be fully reconciled and accounted for by NNPCL.
According to him,the queries were not allegations made by the Senate but were extracted from the audited financial statements submitted by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
Responding, Mr Ojulari pleaded for additional time to fully review the technical and contextual details of the 19 audit queries raised and asked the Committee to support with joint committee to make his Job more essay.
He Further said, a thorough response would be require collaboration with external auditors and internal teams to ensure the issues are appropriately addressed.
“I need to understand the details myself so I can respond appropriately,” Ojulari told the committee. “Now that I’ve heard your perspective, it’s clear I must dig deeper. I will set up a team, engage external auditors, and reconcile the details properly before we submit our responses and now requested for four weeks for sufficient explanations.”
Expressing his disappointment,Senator Adams Oshomohle says,after several weeks that GMD failed to appear if up till now he is not briefed by his representative it be a failure on the side of NNPCL
Senator Oshomhole explained reasons of the committee being chaired by opposition to NNPCL says so the committee can be independent and taken seriously but if NNPCL decides not taken the committee serious by extension Nigeria it means something is wrong.
He adviced GmD Mr Ojulari and his term that Nigeria is expecting something different from the past management but if he repeats what his successor has been doing that look like NNPCL is Country on its own , Nigerians need to ask because NNPCL must be accountable to Nigerian he says’.
Also speaking,senator Hussein Babangida says,GMD and his team should take the Public account serious because Nigeria Wants to know what happened in NNPCL, pleaded that the Committee should give them time so that they would no longer have excuses.
After accepting an apology from the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of NNPCL, Engineer Bayo Ojulari, for his prior failure to honour previous invitations and failed to provide answers,he pleaded that the Committee shock give him three weeks to provide all answer to the queries 2017 to 2023..
Wadada added that NNPCL is expected to submit written responses to all 19 queries within three weeks, after which the GCEO and relevant members of his management
