Nigerian lawmakers issue arrest warrant on Cardoso, Accountant General, 17 oil firms CEOs

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has issued a warrant of arrest on the Central Bank Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, for refusing to appear before it to answer questions on the oil sector.

The committee also ordered the arrest of the Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, and 17 others.

Among the 17 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.

Motion

The decision was taken on Tuesday during the sitting of the committee while considering a petition filed by one Fidelis Uzowanem.

The Chairman of the Committee, Michael Etaba (APC, Cross River), said Mr Cardoso and others have refused to honour its invitations.

Subsequently, a member of the committee, Fred Agbedi (PDP, Bayelsa), moved the motion to issue the warrant of arrest.

Mr Agbedi said the concerned persons should be made to appear before the committee on 14 December.

The motion was adopted by the committee, which ordered the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to execute the warrant.

Afterwards, Mr Etaba explained that the warrant is to compel the concerned individuals to appear before it to respond to the issues raised in the petition.

The petition

Earlier, Mr Uzowanem, who is the petitioner, explained that the petition is on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021.

He said his organisation discovered multiple infractions committed by players in the 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,” he said.

Mr Uzowanem also alleged that some international oil companies laundered millions of dollars for the NNPC Limited, however, they were concealed by NEITI.

“In other words, $124 million was laundered by NNPCL through Total because monies that have been officially paid to Total could not have been concealed if they were not meant for fraudulent purposes.

“Also for Chevron, the dollar payment NEITI puts forward in its report was $76 million but documents emanating from Chevron showed that they received as much as $267 million.

“$191 million was laundered under the cover of Chevron and NEITI concealed that; also, Nigeria Agip Company received $188 million but none of it was reported by NEITI,” he said.

Power to arrest warrant

Section 89 of the 1999 constitution gives the National Assembly and its committees the power to issue arrest warrants in the course of an investigation.

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Section 89 of the Constitution stated that “For the purposes of any investigation under section 88 of this Constitutional and subject to the provisions thereof, the Senate or the House of Representatives or a committee appointed in accordance with section 62 of this Constitution shall have power to –

“Issue a warrant to compel the attendance of any person who, after having been summoned to attend, fails, refuses or neglects to do so and does not excuse such failure, refusal or neglect to the satisfaction of the House or the committee in question, and order him to pay all costs which may have been occasioned in compelling his attendance or by reason of his failure, refusal or neglect to obey the summons, and also to impose such fine as may be prescribed for any such failure, refused or neglect; and any fine so imposed shall be recoverable in the same manner as a fine imposed by a court of law.

“(2) A summons or warrant issued under this section may be served or executed by any member of the Nigeria Police Force or by any person authorised on that behalf by the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the case may require.