Senator Magnus Abe, a member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, board, has denied his alleged involvement in a $650 million oil contract scam.
Abe is, however, insisting that it only exists in the imagination of those interested in ripping Nigeria off.
The immediate past senator who represented Rivers South-East in the 8 assembly in a statement noted that the report was designed to create the impression of a major scandal and arm-twist the Federal Government in the recent attempt to revoke some oil blocks from a foreign company, Addax Petroleum.
The Abe-led presidential inter-ministerial committee recently submitted a report to FG on the abandoned $1 billion Kaztec Engineering Limited (KEL) fabrication yard, located in Ilase village, Snake Island, Amuwo-Odofin LGA, Lagos State.
Presenting the report, Abe stressed that aside from the 3,000 jobs lost to the collapse of the facility in which Kaztec already invested over $650 million, after Addax declared a force majeure over an unrelated matter, monies invested in equipment were also wasted.
He explained that the committee was set up by a presidential directive conveyed by the chief of staff to the president, saying that there was nothing in the committee’s assignment that involved the allocation of oil blocks.
He added that the Nigerian company, Kaztec that had invested millions of dollars in the project with Addax was forced to bear the brunt of the entire dispute, which was actually between Addax petroleum and the Nigerian government.
“Nigerians must look beyond the needless sensationalism and ask the hard questions that need to be answered.”
He queried whether it was the company accused of tax fraud and abandoned its Nigerian investments for over 10 years or the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, that tried to hold them to account that should be held responsible for deceiving the president.
Abe reiterated that the Kaztec committee was not set up by the Minister of Petroleum to award any oil block, neither was it the place of the NNPC to award or revoke oil mining licences.
He added that the committee report focused exclusively on measures and reliefs which the government can legally extend to the company to salvage the tragic losses to an indigenous company.
“There is absolutely no scam on oil blocks or contracts involved in the Kaztec committee report. Issues of revocation, allocation and management of oil blocks are exclusively the preserve of the DPR.”
