The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) will be investigated over an alleged non-remittance of N800 billion to the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) for the maintenance of roads across the country.
This was revealed by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan.
Lawan stated this in his concluding remarks on a bill for an Act to Repeal the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency Act, 2002 and to Establish the Federal Roads Authority Bill, 2019.
According to the Senate President, previous efforts by Nigeria to concession government enterprise failed as a result of systemic corruption.
He, therefore, called for Public – Private – Partnership in the construction of roads across the country if government must meet up to its responsibility of providing good roads.
“Corruption is also responsible for some of the challenges we face in our road sector.
“We recall that the privatization of various enterprises was made right from 1986 till date, and in most cases the privatization or concessioning processes were flawed and of course, we suffer as a country.”
“So, we just have to be very careful. We insist we go on the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) partnership, but we have to ensure that everything is done within the law as required, so that no one takes advantage of his position in government to shortchange the entire people of the country.
“I believe that we need to demand what happened to over N800 billion that PPPRA was alleged to have collected.
“I think that we will take that as a separate issue because we need to verify and confirm, even for the sake of allowing PPPRA to defend itself, because this is not something that we can sweep under the carpet. N800 billion can do a lot of things for our country,” Lawan said.
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