The Senate Committee on Power has given the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) a two week deadline to clear the ports of every container holding equipment meant for the power sector.
The directive comes as the committee on power investigates the auctioning of equipment meant for the National Independent Power Project (NIPP) by the Nigeria customs service.
However at a meeting with the committee, the Comptroller General, NCS, Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko disclosed that the agency has retrieved fifteen containers which were auctioned.
He however said there were still seven outstanding containers belonging to the NIPP which is yet to be retrieved, promising that the agency would retrieve them by Friday.
The committee had last Tuesday ordered the service to retrieve, within seven days all the 22 containers, estimated at over $5.3billion, belonging to the NIPP and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) it was said to have auctioned.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Philip Aduda (PDP, FCT), who gave the order during a meeting the committee had with officials of the NIPP, the Customs Service and PHCN, had warned that key actors in the secret auctioning of the power equipment may end up in jail if the agency failed within seven days to recover the items and return them to government for use.
Aduda, while expressing happiness over the recovery of the containers, however, gave the service two weeks to clear all equipment belonging to the Nigeria Independent Power Project (NIPP) and directed that the equipment be moved to site as soon as possible.
He said the status of all contractors involved in the power project should be published for the committee to be able to follow up, saying “we cannot pay lip service to power projects again in the country.”
One of the committee members, Senator Patrick Akinyelure (LP, Ondo), had remarked that the country did not want any more excuse for constant power failure and stressed that contractors were under obligations to deliver.
He said funding should not be a hindrance, adding that there should be provision for credit between the contractors and officials of NIPP as long as they would collect their money anytime government released money.
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