Reps Issue Warrant Of Arrest On CBN Governor, AGF, 17 others

House of Representatives 

House of Representatives issues an arrest warrant for the governor of CBN and others

The Central Bank Governor, Mr. Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant General of the Federation, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Madein, and seventeen other individuals have been placed under arrest warrant by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions for their refusal to appear before them to respond to inquiries on their activities.

This came after a motion made at Tuesday's committee hearing by Representative Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) was approved. Agbedi, the motion's proposer, stated that the invitees' behavior had made the arrest warrant unavoidable. He stated that the CEOs had been invited four times but had not responded, and that the parliament operated on a timetable.

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After the Speaker, Rep. Tajudeen Abbas, had done his research, he stated that the Inspector General of Police should issue an arrest order so that the CEOs could appear before the committee.

The Committee Chairman, Representative Michael Irom (APC-Cross River), stated in his decision that the Inspector General ought to make certain that the CEOs appeared before the committee on December 14. The petition's foundation, according to petitioner Mr. Fidelis Uzowanem, was the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report from 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.