The House of Representatives Public Petitions Committee has issued an arrest warrant for the Central Bank Governor, Mr Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others for refusing to appear before it to answer questions about their activities.
This came after Rep Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) proposed a motion at the committee hearing on Tuesday.
Moving the motion, Agbedi stated that the arrest warrant was unavoidable due to the attitude of the invitees.
He stated that the parliament operated on a timetable and that the CEOs were asked four times but did not react.
He stated that after due diligence by the Speaker, Rep Tajudeen Abbas, the CEOs should be brought before the committee by the Inspector General of Police via a warrant of arrest.
In his ruling, Committee Chairman Rep Micheal Irom (APC-Cross River) stated that the IG should ensure that the CEOs appear before the committee on December 14.
Earlier, Mr Fidelis Uzowanem, the petitioner, stated that the case was based on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report for 2021.
“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 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 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.