The Senate on Tuesday frowned at what it described as fraudulent diversion of petroleum funds created for maintenance of federal roads in parts of the country.
The upper chamber said a comprehensive investigation would be carried out to find out why a large portion of the petroleum funds as provided in the template of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) was never released for road maintenance as stipulated by law.
The Senate Committee on Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) stated these during the 2018 budget defence of the agency.
The committee said there was no doubt that the operations of the FERMA had been greatly hampered due to paucity of funds.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Magus Abbe, wondered how a law that was enacted to compel PPPRA to remit certain percentage from the sale of fuel to FERMA could be ignored.
Abe said: “The agency (FERMA) has only received the fund once since the law was made years ago. The funding of federal roads was taken into consideration when this fuel price was agreed upon. The money is collected from Nigerians. Every institution that is supposed to benefit gets its own shares except FERMA. Who is taking the money?
“We are going to seek clear mandate to investigate what has happened to the fund. This is not the question of taxation but the money that has been collected that would end in an unknown destination. We will use legislative means to find out how this money is being collected and who collected it.”
