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Niger Delta Fund Initiative: NDDC: Fresh Facts Indict FG, Oil Companies of Defaulting in Payments
http://allafrica.com/stories/200308200547.html
August 19, 2003
Jide Ajani, AbujaFresh facts emerging regarding the proposed amendment to the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Act suggests an unwillingness on the part of the oil companies to pay their statutorily recognised contribution to the purse of the Commission. Also, the Federal Government which initiated the original Act and which is at the fore-front of the amendment being proposed has also been found defaulting in the payment of its contributions as its contributory funding continues to suffer a short fall.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Masari lent credence to the duplicity of the oil exploration companies while establishing the NDDC oversight committee of the House, disclosing: "we also note that some oil companies are not complying with the provision of the Act. We have also noted that even the Federal Government is not fully complying with the provision of the Act."
Meanwhile, the federal government is yet to make any payment to the purse of the Commission since the beginning of this year, a National Assembly source disclosed to Vanguard. And as the proposed amendment to the Act would soon be debated on the floor of the Senate, there are strong indications that Senators from the South-South zone may not go along with the proposed amendment. Some operators in the oil exploration industry expected to bear the 3% contribution to the Commission were said to have been lobbying some top government officials with a view to engendering the amendment of the Act, specifically reducing the oil companies' contribution to 2%.
For instance, whereas the oil companies are expected, according to the NDDC Act, to contribute 3% of their total budget for each year, it has been discovered that some of them are not complying with that section of the Act.
One of the major oil exploration companies, which was sacked by its host community, has been discovered to be a major culprit in this regard.
The company, Vanguard reliably gathered from National Assembly sources, which had its Year 2002 budget as $2.235 billion may not have wholly contributed 3% of its budget for the year in question. The company, it was learnt, made a deduction of $627 million from its total budget before making its 3% deduction from the remainder.
Another exploration company which runs a joint name has also been discovered not to have honoured its contributory obligation to the fund. This company budgeted $1.203 billion for the same Year 2002 but may not have contributed the 3% of that sum. In its own case, a sum of $504 million was deducted from the total budget before the 3% was worked out.
The deductions being made are referred to as First Charges. The 3% it then gave NDDC was 3% of the remainder of the budget. But the company also went a step further, according to sources in the Senate, to place a request before the Development Commission. It requested the Commission to see to the execution of some 186 proposed community projects in its areas of exploration in Akwa Ibom and Rivers State.
Senate sources with links to the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, oversight committee also disclosed to Vanguard that they may have seen through the proposed amendment as a means of satisfying the yearnings of the oil companies to the detriment of the oil producing states.
Also driving his point home, Speaker Masari pointed out that whatever has to be done by way of amendment ought to be in favour of the people of the Niger Delta region.
According to him, "Because of the ruling of the Supreme Court, on the issue of resource control, it has equally necessitated that we have to have another look at the Act, particularly with regards to funding, and this we promise we are going to do objectively and in favour of the Niger Delta.
Vanguard learnt that as at June 2003, all that the oil companies contributed to NDDC is N25billion while the federal government contributed only N20billion. The FG has also been discovered to be paying only 10% as against its enacted 15%.
http://www.earthrights.net/nigeria/news/oilmoneydefault.html