Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, on Thursday, told the joint National Assembly Committee on Niger Delta that all the oil firms operating in the oil-rich region were not fully complying with the law in their remittances to the commission.
The NDDC Act mandates the oil firms to pay three percent of their annual budget to the commission which is expected to utilise same to carry out its mandate in the region.
But Semenitari, lamented before the Senate and House of Representatives’ joint committees at an interactive session that the oil firms were just remitting whatever they like to the commission from inception.
She stated that the NDDC did not have access to the annual budgets of the firms and therefore urged the National Assembly to assist the commission, to get the fiscal document from the firms so that the agency would be able to receive the accurate remittances due to it.
Representatives of major oil firms operating in the area like SHELL, AGIP, TOTAL, SEPLAT, among others, told the National Assembly joint committees that they had made their remittances either in dollar or naira to the NDDC up till last year.
The joint committees took a swipe at the NDDC for converting the dollar remittances from the oil firms into naira and wondered what exchange rates they used in doing the conversion.
Specifically, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Peter Nwaboshi, queried the NDDC boss for reading out the naira value of the dollar remittances of Platform oil company.
Nwaboshi directed the NDDC management to interact with the joint committees in order to obtain the correct remittances due to it and confront the oil firms with the fact in order to demand the appropriate payment.
He stressed the need for the oil firms to respect the laws of the land by ensuring that they pay the accurate funds due to the agency in order to solve the environmental and social crisis affecting the people of the region.
Meanwhile the management of the SEPLAT Petroleum Development Company Plc, had threatened to shut down its operations in the region because of so many challenges that is preventing it from producing in the area for now.
The representatives of the company informed the joint committees that they may be forced to close down operations any moment from now, if the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company failed to honour its own side of the obligation to their Memorandum of Understanding.
The joint committees directed both the SEPLAT and the NPDC to discuss after the session and iron out their differences.
All Credits: PUNCH
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