SUBSIDY PROBE:“PASTOR” TONYE COLE GETS DESPERATE, SENDS VALENTINE CAKE TO FAROUK LAWAN
Nigeria is a funny country where values and virtues are mere official sermons. Honesty and transparency are regularly touted as cardinal principles but never practiced. They have become jaded cliches that no longer make meaning to the ordinary man on the street. Oil and Gas companies, government and other financial agencies are run on the wheels of high level corruption, mal-administration, inefficiency, official laxity and indescribable greed.
According to over-hackneyed cliché, desperate people do not heal, they become more desperate. Like a bull elk in the rut, they will stop at nothing, to achieve their heartfelt desires – which usually borders on the abhorrent. This brings to mind the flagrant indecency and harassment of public officers by the desperate MD of Sahara Energy (an oil company) and self-styled pastor, Tonye Cole. Ever since Hon Farouk Lawan, the Chairman of the House of Representatives ad hoc committee on fuel subsidy probe, started his job, Cole had been breathing down his neck. He even went as far as sending him a valentine cake during the last valentine day celebration. When Lawan rebuffed his brazen attempt to bribe him, Cole shifted his attention to other members of the committee sending the lawmakers brief cases full of dollars. Lawan’s colleagues equally scorned Cole. The fuel subsidy probe panel which has completed public hearing and is working on its report is still in shock over its findings. Members of the panel were not prepared to encounter the massive fraud epitomized by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the fuel subsidy beneficiaries. Cole was a beneficiary thus his Greek gifts to Lawan and other members of the committee. Who knows what atrocities he is desperate to cover up? You couldn’t have forgotten so soon how Sahara Energy was alleged to be behind the adulterated kerosene supplied to airlines instead of the approved Aviation Fuel, otherwise called Jet-A1 by. The major oil marketers had protested the alleged underhand dealings of Sahara Energy which they claimed endangers safety and the integrity of their business if not checked by the government. The associations accused Sahara Energy of selling Dual Purpose kerosene (DPK) to unsuspecting airlines as Aviation Fuel and that checks with Lloyd of London which have the list of oil importers indicated that Sahara has never bought or imported Aviation Fuel in the past one year and that what it has been importing was the domestic kerosene at N40.90K per litre which it in turn sold to airlines as Aviation Fuel at N152 per litre.
The bodies therefore called for a high powered probe panel to verify their claims so as not to endanger the lives of air travelers due to the inherent danger the use of domestic kerosene could cause in its continued use for the propulsion of aircraft engines as against the technically approved Jet-A1
No comments:
Post a Comment