Just In: House of Reps issue warrant of arrest on CBN Governor, AGF, 17 others

 

Michael Irom, the committee chairman, ruled that the IGP was responsible for making sure the CEOs appeared before the committee on December 14.

Earlier, the petitioner, Fidelis Uzowanem, said that the petition was anchored on the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report of 2021. According to Uzowanem, the report was a summary of the transactions in the oil and gas industry for 2021 which NEITI could to be challenged.

 

“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 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.

He added

“We also found that the cash core payment was use as a channel for laundering funds by NNPCL and we found out that NEITI was able to conceal it in its report. In 2021 NEITI reported that Total Exploration and Production Nigeria-Ltd was paid 168 million dollars but examination of submission by the company shows that it received 292 million dollars. In other words, 124 million dollars was laundered by NNPCL through Total because monies that have been officially paid to Total could not have been concealed if it were not meant for fraudulent purposes. Also for Chevron, the dollar payment NEITI puts forward in its report was 76 million dollars but document emanating from Chevron showed that they received as much as 267 million dollars. In other words, 191 million was laundered under the cover of Chevron and NEITI concealed that; also, Nigeria Agip Company received 188milliom dollars but none of it was reported by NEITI”.

The CEO of Western Africa Exploration and Production, the CEO of Ethiopian Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd., and the CEO of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) were among those detained.