CBN Governor, Accountant General, 17 Others Face Arrest for Snubbing House Committee

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued a warrant of arrest for the Central Bank Governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others for failing to appear before it to answer questions on their operations.

This came after the committee adopted a motion by Rep. Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) at its hearing on Tuesday.

Agbedi, who moved the motion, said that the arrest warrant was unavoidable due to the behaviour of the invitees.

He said that the parliament was time-bound and the CEOs had been summoned four times but ignored the invitations.

He said that the CEOs should be made to appear before the committee by the Inspector General of Police through a warrant of arrest after proper verification by the Speaker, Rep. Tajudeen Abbas.

The Committee Chairman, Rep. Michael Irom (APC-Cross River), said in his verdict that the IG should ensure the CEOs were brought before the committee on December 14.

Before that, the petitioner, Mr. Fidelis Uzowanem, said that the petition was based on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.

“We took up the challenge to scrutinise the report and found out that what NEITI compiled is a report that only covers up the fraud that has been happening in the oil and gas industry.

“It goes back to 2016 because we have been tracking, and we submitted a petition to this committee to investigate what has occurred.

“The 2024 budget of $27.5 trillion that has been proposed can be easily funded from the recoverable amount that we identified in the NEITI report.

“It is essentially a concealment of illegal transactions that occurred in NNPCL; they have been colluding 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.