The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petition has issued warrant of the arrest on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others for refusing to appear before it to answer questions on their operations.
This followed the adoption of a motion by Rep. Fred Agbedi, at the committee’s hearing on Tuesday.
Moving the Motion, Agbedi said that the arrest warrant had become inevitable following the attitude of the invitees. He said that the parliament worked with time, and that the CEOs had been invited four times, but failed to respond. He said that the CEOs should be brought to appear before the committee by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), through a warrant of arrest, after due diligence by the Speaker, Rep. Tajudeen Abbas.
In his ruling, the Chairman of the committee, Rep. Michael Irom, said that the IGP should ensure the CEOs were brought before the committee on Dec. 14.
Earlier, the petitioner, Fidelis Uzowanem, said that the petition was anchored on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021. He said that the report was a summary of the transactions in the oil and gas industry for 2021 which NEITI could be challenged.
According to him, the report was a summary of the transactions in the oil and gas industry for 2021, which NEITI could challenge. He said, “We took up the challenge to examine the report and discovered that what NEITI put together is a report 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 it; and we put up a petition to this committee to examine what has happened.
“In other words, 191 million was laundered under the cover of Chevron and NEITI concealed that; also, Nigeria-Agip Company received 188milliom dollars, but none of it was reported by NEITI”.
Some of those to be arrested were the Chief Executive Officer, National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), that of Ethiop Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd, as well as the CEO of the Western Africa Exploration and Production.
