IN SPITE of astounding revelations made so far, the House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel holding public hearing on how $16bn was allegedly spent by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Saturday said it had not decided whether to summon the former leader or not.
Most of the contractors and other stakeholders that had appeared before the committee gave a startling account of how the nation sank billions of public fund into power generation without results.
There were claims of firms collecting contract sums without executing the job and others abandoning the projects half way.
Some eminent persons, including a former Head of State were mentioned as direct beneficiaries of the multibillion dollar contracts in the power sector.
However, the committee said it had not taken a decision to invite Obasanjo to appear before it to explain all issues concerning the controversial contracts that had triggered public outrage.
A member of the committee, who is the Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, told Sunday Punch in Abuja that as at 4pm on Saturday, no decision had been reached on whether to invite Obasanjo or not.
According to him, the committee is taking the issues involved in the power spending one at a time and summoning people based on what has been uncovered.
�The committee is still sitting. As the proceedings go on, the committee will be taking decisions on who to invite.
�The committee has not taken the decision on whether to invite Obasanjo or not,� Ozomgbachi said.
A former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsallami Abubakar (rtd), whose firm, ENEGO Nigeria Limited, won a N19.7bn contract but had not delivered after collecting N13.2bn, Ozomgbachi said that the managing director of the firm had earlier appeared before the panel to give a defence.
He said the panel was not considering summoning Abubakar because it is only when the CEOs are not available that we ask the chairmen to come and testify.
�In any case, this is committee work and we have not taken a stand on it,� he clarified.
Speaking on the case of former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who complained that she did not receive any invitation from the panel, Ozomgbachi blamed it on the fact that she was outside the country.
�The secretariat should be handling that. Normally, she would have been invited formally,� he added.
Meanwhile, the Energy Commission of Nigeria may get a clean bill of health as more facts emerged on the ongoing probe of the $16 billion power sector expenditure.
Investigations showed the members of the House were impressed by the financial records of the organisation.
It was gathered that during a meeting of the panel in Abuja on Saturday, the committee reportedly reviewed the submission of the Director-General of the commission, Prof. Abubakar Sani-Sambo, and expressed satisfaction.
Out of the $16bn spent on the power sector, the commission collected $11m, about N1.2bn.
Sani-Sambo had during a public hearing earlier on Friday, defended the expenditure of the commission between 1999 and 2007 and turned out as one of the officials that was not reprimanded since the probe started on Tuesday.
�What the committee is waiting for right now are the statements of the various banks where the commission drew funds or did transactions.
�We want to see the movement of the funds; who collected what amount and thereafter, the committee will match the expenditure with the actual projects on the ground at the commission.
�If all that is done and the records are okay, the commission won�t seem to have any funds to refund to the coffers of the government,� a source close to the panel confided in our correspondent.
It was also learnt that the committee had insisted on the physical presence of the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Liyel Imoke, at the hearing to respond to allegations that he single-handedly awarded contracts on over 320 National Independent Power Projects worth $3.5bn (N430bn) without following the due process.
The Managing Director of the NIPP, Mr. James Olotu, had informed the committee that most of the contracts were tendered, adding that, there were instances where Obasanjo simply directed Imoke to award them to particular contractors.
He cited the N20.9bn Omoku power project in Rivers State was awarded to Rockson Engineering on the directive of Obasanjo.
�I mean, this kind of development is disheartening for a government that preached due process for eight years.
�What was the due process here? That contracts of such magnitude never went through the tender�s board? Why blame the contractors then for pocking billions of naira without doing any work?
�No, it is unacceptable; Imoke has to come and explain what exactly happened; he must appear before the committee,� the source added further.
It was also gathered that in the case of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, he was needed to clarify the difference in the amount released to the Ministry of Energy between 1999 and 2007.
While the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ibrahim Dankwambo, told the panel that the amount paid out was $3.7bn, the CBN said that it was $4.1bn.
In addition, the NIPP had stated that the CBN, on behalf of the agency, opened letters of credit worth $1.4bn and 224.6m euro for many contractors handling power projects in the country.
The NIPP claimed that it had no records of the banks where the CBN opened the LCs.
However, the contractors had already drawn $414.9m and 30.1m euro of out the money, covering both local and foreign components of their contracts.
The Chairman of the panel, Mr. Ndudi Elumelu, said on Saturday that he was attending a meeting and could not grant an interview when Sunday Punch called him at about 1.05pm.