On Thursday, the Senate announced that it will look into a gas processing agreement involving the Ministry of Finance, the Niger Delta Power Holding Company, Calabar Generation Company Limited, and Accugas Limited.
According to the motion’s sponsor, Senator Aniekan Bassey (PDP, Akwa Ibom), the gas supply arrangement is bad for Nigeria, but the process of getting out of it has gotten the country into even more trouble.
The Senate asked the Federal Government to exercise due diligence in the drafting and implementation of transaction agreements with investors in order to prevent the situation that the government is currently facing under the Gas Supply Agreement (GSA) with Accugas and numerous other firms.
The lawmakers said the deal which involved the sum of $10 million is not a small amount of money.
The Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, subsequently referred the motion to the Committee of Power (when constituted) to look into the matter.
In 2020, Accugas issued a “notice of non-payment” to the then administration of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari over outstanding invoices to the tune of $15.8 million.
This is the first step in activating the World Bank partial risk guarantee (PRG) signed by the Federal Government under the GSA.