The Senate has commenced the process of investigating allegation of financial scandal in the power sector amounting to $1.035billion.
The issue was raised by the chairman Senate committee on FCT, Dino Melaye (APC, Kogi) during plenary session yesterday.
Raising a point of order, Melaye said: “In line with the anti corruption posture of this Senate, and especially now that our cries, observations are yielding dividends as expressly manifested in the case of Babachir Lawal, today I bring to the attention of this Senate a monumental fraud in the power sector.
“In July 2013, the FG raised $1bn from a Euro bond issue, from the proceeds a sum of 350 million dollars was given to Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) 2014, this money was stolen in instalments, sometimes last year the ministry of power came with the idea of a project they termed fast power, this project is supposed to build new generating plants to add power to our grid.
“Up till today, there are no details to build this new generating plant or a feasibility study, there is no appropriation by the National Assembly for this project, the ministry has spent so far 35 million dollars on the Afan power project, that has no appropriation, how and when was this money appropriated?
“We need to find out, out of this money, 29 million dollars was purportedly paid to General Electric (GE) for turbines, while 6 million dollars was paid to others, we need the Senate to investigate this,” he said.
The Senate resolved that a substantive motion be sponsored by Melaye on the issue in the next legislative day.
