The submission of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report ended up in a controversy as both the Chairman of the Committee, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and his Deputy, Chief Steve Orosanye fiercely disagreed on the methodology adopted in preparing the report.
While Orosanye accused Ribadu of adopting “flawed Process” in arriving at the final reports and not abiding by the resolution of the Committee that the leaked draft of the report be jettisoned or verified for factual accuracy Ribadu fired back accusing his Deputy of not attending meetings.
As soon as Ribadu submitted the report to President Goodluck Jonathan where he recommended stricter measures in the collection of revenues from Oil Companies, Mr. Orosanye, a former Permanent Secretary and Head of Service, accused Ribadu of singlehandedly adopting flawed process in arriving at the findings in the report.
President Goodlucvk Jonathan who was apparently embarrassed with the show of shame urged Nigerians not to be distracted but be more concerned with the sanitization of the Petroleum industry which has administration is determined to embark on.
He urged the feuding members who have contrary opinion to submit their opinions through the Chief of State, Chief Mike Oghiadohme.
The 24-member committee were said to had 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.”