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| Ribadu |
President Goodluck Jonathan
will today receive the report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task
Force chaired by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu at the Aso Rock Villa.
The committee which was set up in February with a duty to
determine and verify all petroleum upstream and downstream revenues owed and
payable to the Federal Government of Nigeria, and to take all necessary steps
to collect all debts due and owed met last night in Abuja and agreed to submit
a cleaner and final report today while trying to distance itself from a leaked
report published by various internet outlets.
Report learnt that efforts were made by the government to
remove some of its recommendations that were considered offensive as such some
of its members were mobilized to remove the controversial segments as they
publicly tried to discredit the leaked report.
It was unclear last night if any alterations were made to
the first draft document that has already caused ripples in the country.
Several members of the committee have been given new
assignments, for example a former secretary to the Nigerian government, Stephen
Oronsaye was appointed to the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC) in July while former NBA president, Olisa Agbakoba has seen
two appointments since he joined the committee in February.
A presidency source said that Mr. Jonathan would probably
set up another committee headed by Oronsaye to work further on the report as a
way of killing it.
Some of the embarrassing parts of the report says that the
nation’s oil ministers have been handing out discretionary oil licences; that
the Nigeria National Petroleum Company sells itself cheap oil and gas; and that
hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and royalties are missing as
multinational corporations ride roughshod on Nigeria.
Also, it was claimed that the committee could not fully
perform its work because some government agencies and oil companies refused to
cooperate with the committee in its work.
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