The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petiton has issued warrant of the arrest on the Central Bank Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein and 17 others for refusing to appear before it to answer questions on their operations.⁣
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This followed the adoption of a motion by Rep Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) at the committee’s hearing on Tuesday, December 05, 2023.⁣
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Moving the motion, Agbedi said that the arrest warrant had become inevitable following the attitude of the invitees.⁣
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He said that the parliament worked with time and the CEOs had been invited four times, but failed to respond.⁣
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He said that the CEOs should be brought to appear before the committee by the Inspector General of Police through a warrant of arrest after due diligence by the Speaker, Rep Tajudeen Abbas.⁣
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In his ruling, the Chairman of the committee, Rep Micheal Irom (APC-Cross River) said that the I-G should ensure the CEOs were brought before the committee on Dec. 14.⁣
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Earlier, the petitioner, Fidelis Uzowanem, said that the petition was anchored on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.⁣
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He said that the report was a summary of the transactions in the oil and gas industry for 2021 which NEITI could to be challenged.⁣
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“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.