By Obas Esiedesa

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has denied that it presented forged documents to the House of Representatives Committee on Finance.

PPPRA Assistant General Manager, Corporate Services, Kimshi Apollo told Vanguard on Wednesday that it was impossible for the agency to present forged documents to the lawmakers about its operations.

According to him, “There is nothing like forgery and we are bringing our document before the committee tomorrow (Thursday) and prove our point. I don’t know how people jumped into the conclusion that these documents were forged. It was just a question of reconciling the figures which our people are now doing.

“You must know that the payments of these revenues were not to PPPRA. They were through REMITA. The records are with the Central Bank of Nigeria and so for somebody to say you forged what is already with the CBN and has become a public record is absurd”, he added.

He pointed out that no agency has a better record than PPPRA, noting that the National Bureau of Statistics uses PPPRA data.

He assured that all issues raised by the committee will be cleared up during the session on Thursday.

Chairman of the Committee, Rep. James Faleke, asked the agency to reappear on Thursday to give further clarification on the discrepancies noticed their documents as the PPPRA Assistant General Manager (AGM), Corporate Services, Kimshi Apollo could not give clear answers to some of the questions asked by the lawmakers.

The Chairman of the Committee has queried that the documents submitted by the agency showed that the daily output of PMS and other products were same from 2018 to 2019.

They also observed that the daily consumption of PMS was put at 48 million litres within the period under review while Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) was put at 10.5 million litres per day.

However, in another document the agency claimed that, it discharges 59.90 million litres daily in January 2019, 55.04 million in February and 55.66 million litres in March.

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The documents further indicated that, the supply jumped to 60.27 million litres in January 2020 then 60.56 million litres in February and down to 56.07 million litres in March 2020.

The supply further jumped to 61.92 litres per day in January 2021 and down to 58.09 million litres in January and moved up to 66.64 million litres in March 2021.

Chairman of the Committee Faleke also noted that the agency provided conflicting records on the daily discharge and consumption of petroleum products in the country.

According to him, “the records presented have contradictions that cannot be ignored”.

“Tell us that the documents are not correct so that we can move forward.So, the data you gave us yesterday which says 52 million per day was wrong, so your Naira figure too will be wrong.

“We are working on this foundation, upon which we will develop and work with tomorrow,”.

In his response, Apollo said, they brought the constant figure of 48 million litres based on what transpired earlier Monday regarding the average daily consumption by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).

In his ruling,  the Committee chairman directed PPPRA to produce the records of all the daily output of petroleum products as well as the revenue remittances to the federal government unfailingly.

He also demanded from the Financial Reporting Council, the Accountant General Office as well as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to scrutinize the records and reappear on Thursday.

“It was interesting to note that after submitting their data it is assumed they got to find out that figures in their records were doctored and ambiguous. So we are giving them till tomorrow to come back” .

Vanguard News Nigeria