The Chairman of the Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, Hope Uzodinma, yesterday faulted an allegation by a former Military Administrator of Kaduna State, Colonel Mohammed Dangiwa Umar (retd.) that senators were attempting to sabotage Federal Government’s anti-graft war.
The senator said the allegation was reckless and “un-statesmanly” of the former military administrator.
He expressed surprise that a respected public figure like Umar made such sweeping remarks about the National Assembly without having the facts to back up his claims.
Uzodinma said it was unfortunate that Umar was allegedly being used to malign the integrity of the Senate to satisfy the Managing Director of Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Bala Usman.
The senator accused the NPA chief, who he described as Umar’s daughter’s best friend.
He added that Ms Usman was allegedly frustrating the current Senate investigation into the disappearance of over 282 containers from the ports without a kobo paid to the Federal Government as revenue, among others.
Uzodinma took issues with Umar in a statement in Abuja.
The statement said: “I have a lot of respect for Col Umar. In fact, I see him as a nationalist; but on this one, he goofed.
“While appreciating the relationship between the NPA’s MD and Col Umar’s daughter, I still felt that the statesman in him should have moved him to look at the issues on the ground very dispassionately without bias.
“Honestly, I still don’t understand why the Senate is being blackmailed for performing its constitutional role. A petition was written to my committee by a company, which said it imported rice and paid the relevant duties to the Nigeria Customs Service. Then, when the rice came in, the Customs seized the containers. So, we discussed the petition at the committee’s level and decided to = forward a letter to Customs.
“In the letter, we said we received a letter from this company alleging maltreatment and we implore you to look at the merits or otherwise through your internal mechanisms.
“We never directed the cargo to be released anywhere in the letter. I still have a copy of the letter and the reply from the Customs. Col Umar would have even spoken with Col. Hamed Ali of Customs to verify this before rushing to press with a fiction.”
On Calabar Channel, Uzodinma said: “We are not investigating Calabar Channel dredging now.
“The issue of my interest in Niger Global is neither here nor there because I had long been a businessman, even before venturing into politics. And the company was incorporated in 1995, long before the contract was awarded to it in 2004.
“As at 2004, I was not a senator; I was a businessman. Immediately I aspired to the Senate in 2011, I resigned my chairmanship of the company.
“So, we are not even investigating NPA on Calabar dredging; we are investigating infractions in the import-export cycle where vessels would come into the country and offload goods and return without a dime paid into government coffers.
“How should this investigation not excite any patriotic Nigerian? Why the sustained blackmail from the stable of the NPA, whose MD has refused four invitations of the committee to appear before it to answer to these alleged infractions?”
