The House of Representatives on Monday issued a 7-day ultimatum to the Programme Coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HyPREP) to appear before the Public Accounts Committee of the House for explanation over allegations of mismanagement of over N400 billion in the 2021 and 2024 audit reports from the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (oAuGF).
The ultimatum followed the adoption of a resolution during an investigative hearing held by the House Committee on Public Accounts chaired by Rep. Bamidele Salam.
Speaking at the hearing, Rep. Salam noted that the ultimatum serves as the final warning after HyPREP failed to appear before the committee despite four different invitations extended to it.
He added that if HyPREP fails to appear before the Committee by Monday, 12th October, 2026, the House will be compelled to invoke its power and compel the appearance of the Accounting Officer of the agency.
The Committee also extended the same invitation to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ogoni Remediation Trust Fund.
According to the Audited Reports presented before the Committee, HyPREP failed to submit its audited accounts to the Office of the Auditor General from 2017 to 2021.
Other queries include: Irregular award of Contracts and non-deduction of Statutory Taxes of $2.1 million; Payment of N986 million Consultancy without execution; Irregular Payment of N315million for Training; Payment of N7.2billion for poorly executed contracts; payment of N268 million without prepayment audit; Non-deduction of N32 million statutory taxes; Engagement of External Solicitors with N31.8 million without Attorney General approval; Crude oil recovery from remediation site without being documented; Adoption of progressive salary scale for contract staff; as well as Extra-budgetary expenditure of N931 million.
Others are: Duplication of Services through award of Contracts worth N182 million; Duplication of function monitoring and evaluation worth N507 million; Irregular Payment of N43 million for advertisement without evidence of performance; Irregular stay in office by an officer after the expiration of the secondment period.
According to the 2024 Audit Report presented before the Committee, HyPREP made an Unverified N1.5 billion payment of compensation.
Also queried are: Non-retirement of N14 million of cash advances; Irregular payment of N229.1million; Payment of N260 million for training programme without evidence of execution; Denial of access to N27.5 billion project documents and records.
Rep. Salam added that the HyPREP and Ogoni Trust Fund will also speak to issues surrounding the $1 billion contributed for the clean up of the Ogoni land after the pull out of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of which the Renaissance Energy Ltd claimed to have made a contribution of over $900 million to the fund.
