House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has sent letters to the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke; Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu; VistaJet International; Evergreen Aviation Terminal, operators of private Jets and the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) in preparation to probe all concerned on the chartered private jet saga.
Dated 26th March, the letters was signed by Chairman of the Committee, Honourable Samuel Olamilekan Adeola.
The letter requested the Minister to “tender a written submission within one week about her role and everything she knows about the troublesome transactions, and if as Minister she is entitled to such chartered private jets for private use, and whether or not she has breached public service rules, and state who is responsible for the bills”.
The committee demanded that all other necessary information that would be useful in investigating the issue should be produced.
The committee told Yakubu to forward “all information relating to the deal from year 2011 till date, the level of involvement of his corporation, the contractual agreement between his corporation and the operators of the private jets and its financial commitment to it since year 2011 till date”.
According to sources close to the committee, a request was also placed to the operators of the private jets calling for all “the contracts documents between them and NNPC from 2011 till date, all the flight schedules, the passengers’ manifests from the 2011 till date and the amount of money paid to them during the period under review”.
The probe into Alison-Madueke’s use of private jets for personal trips with bills paid by the government was inspired by a motion moved by Honourable Samuel Adejare.
The committee expressed interest in knowing if and why there was no valid contract agreement between the NNPC/Petroleum Resources Ministry and the private jets operators for the lease of the 850 Challenger Aircraft which was frequently used by the Minister.
A date for the public hearing on the matter would be set immediately after the memoranda has been submitted to the committee in line with the decision of the House.
Trips involving Global Express XRS ,tail number S5-GMG and tail number OE-LGX,OE-LSS and OE-INA costing $300,000 (about N50m) per trip – way above an estimated cost of N7.5million for the same trip – were among new flight schedules operated on foreign trips by the Minister between 2012 and 2013 freshly discovered by committee.
A trip on 21st December 2012 from the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja to the United Kingdom with the Global Express XRS, tail number: OE-LGX which costed N57.5million against estimated N6million was also alleged.
