Some international oil marketing companies listed by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as operating without registration or any other legal identity in Nigeria have denied the allegation.
They include Oando Plc, AA Rano, Sahara Energy Resources and Hyde. The companies were able to deny any involvement in the subsidy allegations being investigated by the House of Representatives Adhoc Committee on petroleum subsidy regime from 2017 till date.
But they had no answer to the assertion by the CAC that they were not legal entities operating in the country within the period in review. According to them, they only lifted crude oil and were not part of the subsidy payment by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Top officials of the oil firms told the House Committee that they were only involved in lifting crude oil, and were never involved in subsidy payments with the NNPC.
Mustapha Aliyu, the committee chairman, said some oil companies were in attendance to explain their role in the deal with the NNPC Ltd.
The chairman, who read a list containing the names of the individual companies, explained that a communication from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) on the committee’s request came back without any information on the affected companies.
He said the committee would write to the embassies of the companies, which he said were mostly expatriates, to provide the details of the profiles.
Mr. Aliyu said there would be questions to answer, adding that the committee wrote to CAC requesting the commission to provide information on about 57 companies.
He said the committee would also write to the commercial desks of their various embassies if they were expatriates to have their full data.
To ascertain the veracity of the over N6 trillion allegedly spent on fuel subsidy as of the second quarter of this year, the committee unveiled plans to extend the ongoing investigation into the fuel subsidy from 2017 to 2022.
During the ongoing investigative hearing, made public a list of 23 unregistered oil companies that participated in the fuel subsidy regime between 2017 and 2021.
The details of the affected companies were contained in a memo sent by CAC, with reference no RGO/SU/VOL.5/2022/0248, dated July 13, 2022, to the chairman, Special Ad-hoc Committee on petroleum products subsidy regime.
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