Chairman of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, PRSTF, and former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Malama Nuhu Ribadu may disown the report of the committee which was leaked to the Press.
The Minister for Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Dieziano Alison-Madueke had in February instituted the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, PRSTF, to probe revenues realized in the Petroleum Sector.
Sources told pointblanknews.com that members of the committee were bitter during its meeting Thursday over leakage of the report which they said was inconclusive.
The 24-member committee were said to have tongue-lashed Ribadu over the leaked draft report, which they claim contained unverified facts and figures and as such, requested he publicly disowns it as not that of the committee
A member of the committee who spoke on condition of anonymity to pointblanknews.com said the report, which was in circulation, was not a certified true copy as all the facts and figures were not verifiable.
“We were shocked to see copies of the draft report. The crux of our meeting today was on the leaked draft because most of the things in the draft are not accurate, factual and not verifiable.”
Sources hinted that after the June meeting of the group, it was agreed that they meet again before the document is put to finality but “that meeting never held, Ribadu and Shasore kept the draft and we were shocked to see it in the media through Reuters and other social media organs.
“Ribadu likes grandstanding, he has used that to win gullible members of the public to himself for too long and that is what we don’t want to see in this very important assignment we have before us,” the source said.
According to the source, we had agreed after June to meet again and harmonize, verify grey areas in the report, we agreed to continue our investigation and do a thorough job, we agreed to reconcile every part of our findings and we agreed to meet again and do the final copy after all findings and facts have been verified. That was the last, we never met, Ribadu never showed up, only for the draft to surface in the media.”
A member of the Committee and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Chief Anthony George Ikoli in a newspaper interview recently, alleged, “the committee’s assignment is factually yet to be definitively concluded.”
According to Ikoli who is also a member of the Report-Writing Sub Committee, “a final report which would be the culmination of the processes and procedures agreed and adopted by the committee cannot exist, especially not in the format being circulated in the media, both social and print.”