Reps issue warrant of arrest on CBN Gov, AGF, others

By Christiana Ekpa

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued a warrant of arrest on the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, for refusing to appear before it to answer questions on the oil sector.
The Committee equally ordered the arrest of the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others.
Others to be arrested are the heads of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), Ethiop Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd, and Western Africa Exploration and Production.
Others are heads of Alteo Eastern E&P Co. Ltd., First Exploration & Production Ltd., The Md, First E&P Oml 8385 Jv, Heirs Holdings Oil and Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (Mpnu).
Also listed are Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Total Exploration & Producing Nig (TEPN), Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC), Pan Ocean Oil Nig, Ltd, Newcross E&P Ltd and Frontier Oil Ltd.
The House decision was taken at the investigative hearing of the committee to consider a petition filed by one Fidelis Uzowanem on Tuesday.
The chairman of the House Committee, Hon. Michael Etaba (APC, Cross River), said Cardoso and others have refused to honour the invitation of thr legislative panel.
Consequently, a member of the committee, Fred Agbedi (PDP, Bayelsa), moved the motion to issue the warrant of arrest against the erring officials.
Agbedi said the concerned persons should be made to appear before the committee on December 14.
The motion was adopted by the committee, which ordered the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to execute the warrant.
Afterwards, Etaba explained that the warrant was to compel the concerned individuals to appear before committee to respond to the issues raised in the petition.
Uzowanem, who is the petitioner, had explained that the petition was on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.
He said his organisation discovered multiple infractions committed by players in the Nigeria’s oil and gas sector in connivance with government officials.
“We took up the challenge to examine the report and discovered that what NEITI put together as 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 we have been following and we put up a petition to this committee to examine what has happened.
“The 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion that has been proposed can be confidently funded from the recoverable amount that we identified in the NEITI report,” the petitioner stated.