By Yemie Adeoye & Inalegwu Shaibu
The Senate Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream and Downstream) has declared that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, is solvent thereby laying to rest claims and counter claims by government officials that the corporation is insolvent.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), Senator Lee Maeba, who chaired the Joint Committee informed the Senate at plenary that the committee met with officials of both the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance led by Babalola over the allegations of insolvency and discovered that the NNPC was not insolvent.

Speaking after raising a point of order citing Order 43 of the Senate Rules, Senator Maeba told the Senate that the Joint Committee discovered that the information the media relied upon to publish the story that NNPC was insolvent was based on a document issued in 2008 that summarized the state of finances of the Corporation in that year when the activities of militants in the Niger Delta almost crippled oil production in the country.

He explained that in 2008, due to heightened militants’ activities, the nation’s crude oil production reduced from 2.2 million barrels per day to about 800,000 barrels per day, adding that this was what was reflected in the audited accounts of the NNPC for that year which was reported in the media as if it was the current state of the Corporation’s finances.

Senator Maeba who requested for additional two weeks to enable the Committee go through the volumes of documents requested from NNPC and submit a written report said: “I want to report that our interim finding is that NNPC as at today is solvent.”

The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided in the absence of Senate President, David Mark ruled that the Joint Committee be given two weeks to conclude its assignment.

It would be recalled that since the Minister of State for Finance, Mr Remi Babalola, was purportedly quoted in the media two weeks ago to have declared that NNPC was insolvent, Mr Olusegun Aganga, Mrs Dora Akunyili and Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, Ministers of Finance, Information, and Petroleum Resources respectively, had come out to say that the Corporation is not insolvent.

Meanwhile, it was gathered that attempts to resolve the imbroglio generated by these claims and counter claims over the corporations finances may not have been laid to rest owing to the NNPC management’s inability to meet the deadline for submission of documents required by the Joint committee.

The Senator Lee Maeba led Joint Committee had in a meeting involving the NNPC Group Managing Director and the Minister of State for Finance, last Wednesday, had requested that the NNPC produce documents of its budget for the last 10 years, the next day.

Other documents requested by the joint committee included signatures of the persons that granted the approvals for the budget within the same period and records of the N1.15 trillion subsidies collected within the same period.

Mr. Oniwon had earlier told the joint committee that the Federal Government had utilised parts of the N1.15 trillion for establishment of the Directorate of Petroleum Resources, DPR, and a sugar company.

He disclosed that the NNPC released N651 million for the take off of DPR and that this money has never been refunded by the government.

A member of the joint committee who spoke with the Vanguard disclosed that as at 13:00 hours on Friday, none of the documents requested had reached the Senate despite assurances from the Group Managing Director, Austen Oniwon.