To give bite to the directives, the activities of every committee will be under the scope of an extensive monitoring strategy to ensure that the issues that destroyed the image of the last House are avoided.
This present moves in line with the legislative agenda of the present House, which states that, ?the House shall restructure management and functions of legislative committees towards adequacy in capacity and improved productivity.?
Details of the measures being taken include the enforcement of the Code of Conduct for chairmen and members of the committees. Committees are also to submit their work plan and periodic reports of their activities to the House for debate.
Meanwhile, the new feeling in the House will be severely tested as the House begins another round of investigations into transactions and expenditures of government. It was learnt that already there were horse-trading and interplay of interests, which usually characterise this exercise.
Revelations at the investigations of irregularities in the concession agreement between the Federal Government and a private firm in respect of a single window contract showed that many interests are at play.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), which is supposed to be the ultimate beneficiary of the services to be delivered by the firm (Single Window and Technology Limited) that has been given the contract, is raising issues against it. The NCS preferred the services of another firm (Webb Fontaine), which had been working for the Customs. While condemning the new concession agreement, the NCS said it was comfortable with the status quo.
However, the Federal Ministry of Finance, which is the supervising ministry for NCS, said the choice of a new firm to handle the single window contract for the Customs arose from the failures of the old contractor to deliver.
The ad hoc committee on Single Window Concession Agreement between the Federal Ministry of Finance and Single Window and Technology Limited, while expressing dismay at the manner in which the new contract was signed, pointed out that there was no reason to effect any change at the time it was done. The position compelled some stakeholders to accuse the panel of taking sides with the NCS in the matter, and opposing the Ministry of Finance for entering into the agreement with the new firm. The committee is headed by the Deputy Majority leader of the House, Leo Ogor.
A motion by the chairman house committee on services Yakubu Dogara, who headed the committee on customs in the last House, had raised some issues against the single concession agreement: ?For the next 15 to 20 years, Single Window Systems and Technology Limited, a company which allegedly lack official address, will operate a new National Single Window (NSW) platform - a crucial technology-based import and export documentation services, which already exists and for which the government has spent N300 billion.?
Lawmakers alleged that the responsibility was primarily that of the NCS but was given to the firm in a non-transparent process that breached procurement rules, and would hurt the economy.
While inaugurating the ad-hoc committee, Tambuwal enumerated the objectives of the enquiry. ?This legislative inquiry is in line with the transformation agenda and anti-corruption campaign of the government and responds directly to the yearnings of our people. This House fully subscribes to the transformation agenda of the President and realises that the promises of transformation may not be realised if the nation?s financial base is weak. Therefore, ensuring optimal revenue earnings from our public assets is a sine qua non to the success of the President?s transformation agenda,? he said.
He added that, ?the objectives of this hearing include ? to determine the due process credentials of all activities leading up to the concession and the management of the concession thereafter in the areas of:
? compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations
? procurement of requisite approvals, permits and consents
? compliance with the principles of openness, fairness, economy, efficiency etc in dealing with public assets
? conformity with global benchmark practices for similar transactions.?
At the centre of the probe is the Ministry of Finance, which handled the concession agreement and against which most of the allegations were directed. Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Mr. Danladi Kifasi, explained how the concession took place. He pointed out that there were no under hand dealings as alleged.
At the Public Hearing, he said that three separate reports had indicted Webb Fontaine for failing in its responsibilities. Those reports that indicted the company according to Kifasi included those of the Legal Department of the Ministry; a consultancy firm, Accenture, commissioned by the Ministry to look into the activities of the service providers and that of the Presidential Task Force.
Kifasi added that the ministry was forced to shop for a replacement following after seeing Webb Fontain?s failure to deliver. He told the committee that the ministry suspected that Webb Fontaine was deliberately foot-dragging in fulfilling its contractual agreement in order to push for an extension since the agreement was expected to terminate in 2012. He disclosed that the company had received N43.5 billion between 2006 and March 2011 without discharging its duties satisfactorily.
Meanwhile, a document before the committee shows that the NCS had complained about the services of the old firm. A letter to the Finance Minister dated August 2, 2011, and signed by the Customs boss, Alhaji Abdullai Dikko-Inde reads in part: ?I regret to inform the Minister that of recent Messrs Webb Fountain have been performing below expectation especially in the area of provision of Associated Services. Earlier in the year, Messrs Webb Fontaine submitted a proposal for the renovation of my office with a completion period of three weeks. Approval was granted them and I relocated to the office of my Special Assistant in June this year.
?However, I regret to inform the Honourable Minister that the said renovation has taken them more than nine weeks without completion. It is saddening to note that the contractors have abandoned the work thereby incapacitating the office of the Comptroller General. All efforts to make Messrs Webb Fontaine see the need for a timely completion of the renovation works have yielded no results.
?In view of the above therefore, I am constrained to request the Honourable Minister not to honour any claim in respect of renovation works of the office of the Comptroller General of Customs from Messrs Webb Fontaine until confirmation from the Service is obtained.?
The Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, who was in office at the time the concession agreement was prepared had engaged members of the committee in a war of words over allegations that he presided over the concession agreement in breach of due process.
Dogara, at a special open hearing convened to listen to the minister defend himself said that part of the process leading to the concession was without respect to due process. According to him, the contract bid was not advertised and the provision of the Public Procurement Act was ignored. He said that the Ministry of Finance failed to carry the NCS along before entering into the contract agreement as required by law.
But Aganga said: ?You are very wrong in your assumptions. All the due processes were followed before the agreement was signed. We equally got proper approval from the appropriate authority.?
Aganga noted that the company, which had the contract to take care of some Customs related responsibilities failed to execute it to specifications despite been paid N40 trillion. Aganga told the panel that the Single Window concession was a joint venture agreement, which transcended the scope of the Public Procurement Act and said that all his actions were based on legal advice.
When the lawmakers insisted that the processes were out of tune with due process, Aganga suggested that, ?let us leave these issue for lawyers to handle.?
The House is also investigatiing allegations that the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had not been making remittances to the Federation Account.
After adopting a motion to that effect, the House mandated its joint Committee on Finance and Petroleum Resources to carry out the probe.
Deputy Minority Leader, Samson Osagie, who sponsored the motion that led to the probe, had said that the, ?NNPC has become a behemoth that has refused to subject its budget to the National Assembly for scrutiny.?
In adopting the motion, the House said the decision was based on the importance of accurate revenue projection in the national budget and for Parliament to ascertain NNPC?s level of compliance with Section 162 [1] of the Constitution.
The House said that the investigation was made more imperative by complaints from other tiers of government that these agencies have short-changed the Federation Account to the tune of N700 billion.
Osagie noted that the statutory allocation of revenues to the various tiers of government for August was stalled due to the non-remittance of N450 billion to the federation account by the NNPC. He urged the House to invoke its oversight powers to track the anomaly and stop the rot in the Corporation.
The House found a supporter in the former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olisa Agbakoba, who in a lecture ?Public Expectation from the Committee System,? during the inauguration of the House committees, stated that the NNPC had become a drainpipe.
According to him, it had become important for the National Assembly to deepen its knowledge base in order to improve on its oversight function on the NNPC. He said:
?The perception I get from outside is that the oversight function is misunderstood and has assumed the character of a probe. Therefore the relationship between the Legislature and the Executive is lost in that conflict. This should be avoided.?
?You must improve on your knowledge base to be able to make progress in oversight and lawmaking. NNPC owes so much money. The question is why? If an oversight function is being performed, questions such as ?Do we need an NNPC?? will be asked. I will urge you to consider a law to scrap NNPC. We do not know the budget they produce, all we hear is that it has been a deficit. What we want to know is how much money do we make from Petroleum? When Nigeria does not know the cost of oil, which is the cost of producing a barrel of crude, how will you interrogate what the IOCs give us? The IOCs take us as a laughing stock. It is the function of this chamber to stop this nonsense. To do that you must have knowledge.?
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