The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has commenced an investigation into the alleged indebtedness of the Nigerian Ports Authority to port operators amounting to over $800m.
Chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, said since the NPA needed to be present alongside the port operators, the committee would take the investigation closer to both parties in Lagos. Oke made this known at the investigative hearing of the committee in Abuja on Friday.
“The parliament will move the hearing to Lagos where all parties will meet with us at Marriott Hotel in Ikeja between December 8 and 9. We hope to resolve this issue once and for all. Eight hundred million dollars is not small amount of money.”
Meanwhile, the committee is also probing into why the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate’s failure to employ workers in 2018 despite that the National Assembly appropriated allocation for the purpose.
The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation had, in an audit query being verified by the committee, said N1.7bn was approved for PTAD as personnel cost in 2018 but it utilised only N1.4bn and returned the balance of about N310m to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
