The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has ordered the arrest for Central Bank Governor, Mr Olayemi Cardoso, and the Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs Oluwatoyin Madein, along with 17 others.
The reps authorized the issuance of arrest warrants over their repeated failure to attend the committee’s hearings and respond to inquiries about their operations.
The decision to issue arrest warrants was prompted by the adoption of a motion put forth by Rep Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) during the committee’s hearing on Tuesday.
Agbedi emphasized that the attitude of the invitees made the arrest warrant inevitable.
Highlighting the parliament’s commitment to timeliness, Agbedi noted that despite being invited four times, the CEOs failed to respond to the invitations.
He proposed that the Inspector General of Police, following due diligence by Speaker Rep Tajudeen Abbas, should utilize a warrant of arrest to compel the CEOs to appear before the committee.
In his ruling, the Chairman of the Committee, Rep Micheal Irom (APC-Cross River), mandated the IG to ensure the CEOs’ appearance before the committee on December 14.
Earlier, the petitioner, Mr Fidelis Uzowanem, stated that the petition was based on the 2021 Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report.
“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 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.
Kanyi Daily recalls that President Bola Tinubu had nominated Olayemi Cardoso as the new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
