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•Probe to start after deregulation The desire to superintend the effective take off of deregulation in Nigeria’s downstream sector necessitated the suspension of the planned probe of the over N1 trillion spent on fuel subsidy, BusinessDay has been told. At a time the public was upbeat on expectations of the outcome of the probe, government decided to “temporarily” suspend the inquiry into the rot that characterised the subsidy era at the ministry of petroleum resources. BusinessDay had last week exclusively reported that the government had bowed to pressure from top government officials and politicians to suspend the probe of the sector. In an interview with BusinessDay shortly after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Mansur Mukhtar, minister of finance, said the decision to suspend the probe was informed by the need to focus more on the success of the deregulation of the downstream sector of the economy. “I could remember that we were in the process of recruiting international auditors to look into the template of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) for us to get a clear picture of the money spent on the subsidy but mid way we felt that there was the need to focus more on the deregulation before doing any other thing,” he said. Mukhtar stated that it is only when the deregulation of the sector has fully taken off and the associated problems resolved that the government would begin the probe of the monumental fraud that characterised the subsidy era. “Basically, we do not want to cloud everything. We would like to take the issue one after the other and we believe that once we have succeeded in dealing with the deregulation issue, we will now be more focused to handle the probe of the subsidy,” the minister said. But an insider told BusinessDay that the minister may have been just begging the issue and that his statement confirmed the death of the probe. “Let them not deceive you, that probe will not see the light of the day because very top and influential Nigerians are involved in the subsidy fraud. The very few powerful Nigerians involved would go to any length to ensure that the whole thing is frustrated. This maybe the last time you will hear an official statement on the matter,” the source said. It would be recalled that the Federal Government through Olusegun Adeniyi, special adviser to President Umaru Yar’Adua on media and publicity, had in March 2009 told State House correspondents that those indicted in the monumental fraud that characterised the sector over the years would be brought to book. “There will be serious audit in the sector especially with regards to PPPRA and some other agencies. But I assure you that those issues will be looked at. They are actually being looked at because we just had a meeting with the finance and petroleum ministers and those are some of the issues we talked about. There is going to be a process of auditing to find out how we arrived at the template they are using to determine the subsidy.”