The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued an arrest warrant for the new Central Bank Governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso; the Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Madein; and 17 others for their refusal to honor the committee’s invitations to address inquiries regarding their operations.
It was gathered that the arrest warrant was issued due to their continuous refusal to respond to the invitation to appear before the committee.
Michael Irom, the committee’s Chairman ruled that the Inspector General of Police should ensure the appearance of the CEOs before the committee on December 14 through a warrant of arrest after Speaker Rep. Tajudeen Abbas conducts due diligence.
Earlier during the committee’s hearing on Tuesday, Fred Agbedi moved a motion leading to the adoption of the arrest warrant.
The lawmaker said that despite being invited four times, the important figures failed to attend the hearings, compelling the need for this action.
The petitioner, Mr Fidelis Uzowanem, said that the petition was anchored on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.
“We took up the challenge to examine the report and discovered that what NEITI put together is a report is only a consolidation of fraud that has been going on in the oil and gas industry. It dates back to 2016 because was have been following and we put up a petition to this committee to examine what has happened. The 2024 budget of 27.5 trillion that has been proposed can be confidently funded from the recoverable amount that we identified in the NEITI report. It is basically a concealment of illegal transactions that took place in NNPCL, they have been in the sink with some oil companies where some companies that did not produce crude were paid cash core, an amount paid for crude oil production,” he said.
Some of those to be arrested were the Chief Executive Officer, of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), that of Ethiop Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd., as well as the CEO of Western Africa Exploration and Production.
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