Given the continuing crisis in power supply throughout Nigeria, the decision by the House of Representatives to examine what happened to the N16 billion allocated by the two administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo to improve the generation, transmission and distribution of power, was bound to ruffle more than just a few feathers.
The palaver over the investigation into the outcome of money supposedly expended on power generation has spawned a probe into a probe, divided the legislature, and caused a ruckus over damage control within the governing party.
The result has been the confusion created by an Assembly that appears to be reversing itself.
The members of the first probe are now at the centre of another probe and it appears, not surprisingly, that there will be two separate sets of findings, and one report will discredit the other.
Next On Sunday has learnt that the new probe, headed by the Deputy Whip of the House, Aminu Tambuwal has already found that the power projects that were meant to have been carried out during the years 1999 to 2007, cost the nation N1.3 billion and not N16 billion as announced by the Ndudi Elumelu led House Committee on Power and Steel that authored the controversial report.
The Tambuwal Review panel which began sitting two weeks ago, looks likely to conclude that 40 of the 80 recommendations for legal action made by the Elumelu committee have no grounds.
Fresh facts have also emerged on why most members of the House spoke against consideration of the report of their own Committee on Power when the matter came up for debate on the floor last month.The report was first presented before the House in October last year and only came up for debate in March of this year after several postponements.
In a rowdy session many members spoke against considering the report , others were in favour of stopping the debate and a third group decided that events had overtaken the recommendations of the Committee. NEXT gathered that the governing party had urged its members in the house to push for a rejection of the report.
A source in the Tambuwal committee told NEXT that, earlier in the week, the party hierarchy met with the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole; some principal officers of the House and some prominent members of the committee on power on the matter.
The party leadership was said to have prevailed upon the House leadership to tread softly in order not to embarrass some of its members indicted by the report. This led to the situation where the House of Representatives was seen to be reversing itself and turning against the report they had earlier applauded.
Among those indicted by the Elumelu Committee and recommended for further investigtion by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission were Olusegun Obasanjo; former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Agagu, who served as minister of power under Obasanjo and the Cross River State governor, Liyel Imoke, who also served in the same portfolio in 2007.
According to our source, the meeting led to the decision by some principal officers of the House to personally lobby for the dumping of the report.
It was also gathered that the idea to establish a seven-member committee to review the report came from PDP party officials who wanted to shield those indicted from further humiliation and Aminu Tambuwal as Deputy Whip fitted the bill for the task.
Other members of the committee drawn from the six geo-political zones are Hassan Shekarau (North West), Adisa Adesida (South West), Mohammed Monguno (North East), Chile Igbauwa (North Central), Cyril Maduabum (South East) and Patrick Ikhariale (South South).
According to the source, the House leadership also decided, at the last minute, not to transmit live the initial debate on the Elumelu report because of the need to protect the indicted ones.
Tambuwal denies that the panel he heads was set up specifically to discredit the report of the Committee on Power and Steel “It was obvious, at the time that the report was submitted, that if it had been accepted by the House, it would have done collateral damage to the credibility of the entire House and not just the committee. It is why we had to find a way of fine-tuning it by doting its i’s and crossing its t’s”, Tambuwal told NEXT.
A senior member of the Tambuwal review panel, however, said there were noticeable malpractices – such as over-invoicing – in the execution of the NIPP project. He said the committee has also run into unexpected delays in its effort to get to the bottom of the suspected malpractices.
For instance, the committee had declared it would have the Central Bank governor Charles Soludo arrested before the Bank complied with their request for the letters of credit issued on the project.
Tambuwal, confirmed that it was true his committee had problems getting the required documents from the CBN before it approached the Nigerian Institute of Bankers (NIB).
“The letters that were sent to the NIB took two days or less to be acknowledged and responded to; while those written to the CBN usually took a week or more,” Tambuwal said.
Mr. Tambuwal also said his committee was comprised mostly of members who were against a third term for Obasanjo on principle, and hence that ‘they would do their work without fear or favour.’ Minority Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume, however, told Next on Sunday that he was delighted that a committee was eventually set up to look into the report.
Ndume, a member of the ANPP who moved the motion on January 31, 2008 that led to the Elumelu investigation, said setting up the second committee to review the report, was better than allowing the report to be killed outright.
He said it was unfortunate that the way proceedings were being conducted in the House gave the impression that some elements wanted the report killed.
However in a twist to the case, Chinedu Ibekwe, the consultant who was engaged by the Elumelu committee to write the report into their investigations has admitted three days ago that he put in a bid for an Independent Power Project but lost.
Mr. Ibekwe who testified in front of the Tambuwal committee, however insists he only wrote up the findings of the Elumelu committee contrary to claims by the Secretary of the Power Committee , S.Y Ahmed, that he (Ibekwe) wrote the entire report.
This case of a clear conflict of interest, will undoubtedly further dent the credibility of the Elumelu report and possibly provide ammunition for those who want to see it killed. As confusion continues to trail the House’s effort to come to grips with the NIPP, Nigerians continue to wallow in darkness.