The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued a warrant for the arrest of the Central Bank Governor and 18 others for refusing to appear before it to answer questions on their operations.
This followed the adoption of a motion by Rep. Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) 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.
Despite being invited four times, the CEOs failed to respond, while the parliament worked diligently to meet the deadline.
The Inspector General of Police should bring the CEOs to appear before the committee through a warrant of arrest after due diligence by the Speaker, Tajudeen Abbas.
The Chairman of the Committee, Michael Irom (APC-Cross River), ruled that the I-G should ensure the CEOs appear before the committee on Dec. 14.
Earlier, Mr. Fidelis Uzowanem, the petitioner, stated that the petition relied 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 challenge.
“We took up the challenge to examine the report and discovered that what NEITI put together as a report is only the 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.
“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 a 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.
He added, “We also found that the cash core payment was used as a channel for laundering funds by NNPCL, and we found out that NEITI was able to conceal it in its report.
“In 2021, NEITI reported that Total Exploration and Production Nigeria Ltd. was paid 168 million dollars, but examination of the submission by the company shows that it received 292 million dollars.
“In other words, 124 million dollars was laundered by NNPCL through Total because monies that have been officially paid to Total could not have been concealed if they were not meant for fraudulent purposes.
“Also for Chevron, the dollar payment NEITI puts forward in its report was 76 million dollars, but documents emanating from Chevron showed that they received as much as 267 million dollars.”
“In other words, 191 million was laundered under the cover of Chevron, and NEITI concealed that; also, Nigeria Agip Company received 188 million 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 Wester Africa Exploration and Production.
