Nigeria: House of Reps accuses PPPRA of doctoring revenue documents

The House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Wednesday walked out on the Pipeline Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) for failing to give appropriate figures on its daily output of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) and other petroleum products.

The Chairman of the Committee, Rt. Hon. James Faleke and members, after deliberations concluded that there were discrepancies in the records presented by the PPPRA in comparison to what is to the government.

Following the inability of the PPPRA Assistant General Manager Corporate Services, Kimshi Apollo to give clear answers to some of the questions asked by the lawmakers, the Committee advised the agency to reappear before it to give further clarification on the identified differences in their documents

Going by PPPRA’s presentation, Faleke had pointed out that documents submitted by the agency showed that the daily output of PMS and other products has been the same from 2018 to 2019.

The committee noted that 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 but in a different document, the agency contradicted itself by claiming that it discharged 59.90 million litres daily in January 2019, 55.04 million in February and 55.66 million litres in March.

The document submitted also indicated that 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.

However, Faleke, Chairman of the Committee, said the agency provided conflicting records on its daily discharge and consumption of petroleum products in the country.

“There are contradictions that can’t be ignored in the records you presented, Faleke told the PPPRA”.

“Tell us that the documents are not correct so that we can move forward”

In defence of his agency, PPPRA AGM, Apollo claimed the agency 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).

The Committee, however, directed the PPPRA to unfailingly produce records of all the daily output of petroleum products as well as the revenue remittances to the federal government.

(TODAY)