By Olusegun Olanrewaju
The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigating the sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil amounting to over $2.4bn and crude oil export to global destinations from 2014 to date yesterday threatened to serve the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, with summons over their failure to answer queries on the alleged illegal sale of crude oil to China and utilisation of funds recovered through whistle-blowers without National Assembly appropriation.
During its last sitting on April 11, top officials of the Federal Government failed to appear before the committee.
The committee was to question ministers and other heads of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of the Federal Government as well as oil companies and banks. However, only the National Intelligence Agency and the Code of Conduct Bureau sent representatives on the government side.
The committee, consequently re-invited Malami, Ahmed, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, among others.
In its resumed sitting yesterday, Chairman of the Committee, Mark Gbillah, gave the ruling at the resumed hearing of the investigation, adding that both ministers have been uncooperative with the panel despite several letters of invitation.
Gbillah said, “We have not been getting any form of cooperation from the Ministry of Finance and Attorney General’s office regarding this investigation despite a series of correspondents sent to them on this matter that we are investigating.
“We’ve seen documentation from the Accountant General’s office, where the Minister of Finance approved the payment of the substantial significant amount of money to so-called whistle-blowers where details of monies recovered were not provided.
“We’ve heard Media reports by the Federal Government indicating that millions of dollars were recovered through whistle-blower revelations on behalf of the country. But we as a parliament have not seen where those monies were routed through the constitutional appropriation process before they were expended. The constitution is very clear about the receipt and expenditure of Nigeria’s money,” he said.
*Threatens to arrest Attorney-General, finance minister over alleged payment of $200m consultancy fees
Specifically, Gbillah said the panel is interested in knowing where the Attorney General derives his powers to approve payment of funds meant for the federation without recourse to the legislature through a formal request by the executive.
“We’ve looked at the functions of the Attorney General’s office and we’ve not seen any statutory powers provided for the Attorney General by the constitution to determine how Nigeria’s money should be spent.
“There was an incident about a whistle blower who made a formal report to Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) about $200m paid into two companies account Biz Plus, and GSCL allegedly for consultancy services, which allegedly were approved, they said by the Attorney General’s office on the approval of Mr. President.
“We need the Honourable Minister of Finance, and the Attorney General of the Federation to appear before this House to provide clarity on the inflows that have come in from whistle blowers recoveries, and about these monies that were recovered, and the CBN is required to provide information that has been provided by these whistle blowers about substantial amounts of monies that were paid supposedly and allegedly for consultancy services when there’s no record of any agreement entered into by those companies regarding any services.
“These are very weighty allegations and as a responsible House, we owe everybody a fair hearing and a benefit of the doubt, and this is what we’ve been seeking to accord those who have been mentioned in these allegations.
“But we find it uncautionable that the Honourable Minister of Financial and Attorney General of Federation have not bothered to respond to any of the correspondence from the committee and this in our opinion shows a lack of regard not only to the Institution of House but that of the National Assembly as a whole.
“We will make this further appeal to the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of the Federation and all others who have not responded or who have not honoured the Committee’s invitations to do so in the national interest, and if they fail to do so, we will be constrained to invoke the instrument if the summons and all other necessary powers the National Assembly can exercise in this regard.
“But we want to make this a formal and final notice to those concerned, the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Attorney General of the Federation to cause appearance before the committee to give evidence concerning the allegations that have been laid concerning the questions the committee has requested for them to answer and to respond to,” the chairman submitted.
