The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued warrants of arrest on the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others.
This followed a notice that the proposed 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion could be confidently funded from the recoverable amounts identified in a report of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
Legislators accused the officials of failing to appear to answer questions on their operations.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion moved by Hon. Fred Agbedi member representing Sagbama/Ekeremor Federal Constituency of Bayelsa State at the committee’s hearing session yesterday.
Moving the motion, Agbedi stressed that the arrest warrant had become inevitable following the attitude of those invited adding that the parliament worked with time and the CEOs had been invited four times, but failed to respond.
The Lawmaker stated that the CEOs should be arrested and brought before the committee by the Inspector General of Police through a warrant of arrest after due diligence by the Speaker, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Michael Irom member representing Obubra/Etung Federal Constituency from Cross River State ruled that the IG should ensure they were brought before the committee on December 14, next week Thursday.
Meanwhile, the petitioner, Mr Fidelis Uzowanem, noted that the petition was anchored on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.
Fidelis said, “We took up the challenge to examine the report and discovered that what NEITI put together is only consolidation of fraud that has been going on in the oil and gas industry.
“It dates back to 2016 because we have been following and we put up a petition to this committee to examine what has happened.”
He noted that the proposed 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion could be confidently funded from the recoverable amount identified in the NEITI report.
However, he said: “It is basically a concealment of illegal transactions that took place in NNPCL. They have been in sync with some oil companies where some companies that did not produce crude were paid cash core, an amount paid for crude oil production.”
