The House of Representatives has summoned the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) and the Managing Director of National National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), CEOs of oil companies to appear before it, Tuesday 27 September, with necessary documents to offer explanations on the structure and accountability of Joint Venture (JV) businesses and Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) from 1990 to date.
Hon. Hassan Fulata issued the summon at the inauguration of the hearing, following the absence of the Heads of MDAs.
Also expected to appear at the hearing are heads of MDAs of Federal Government and oil companies, namely, ministry of industry, Justice, Account General of the Federation office, Total, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Aiteo, NNPCL.
Fulata warned that the parliament would not deal with anybody other than the CEO, emphasizing that they must appear unfailingly on September 27.
Fulata, however, said the NNPCL GMD, Mele Kyari wrote to the House to inform them that he was in New York with President Buhari.
The lawmaker said they will give the GMD time to allow for his arrival back to Nigeria.
Addressing the lawmakers, the representative of the Account General of the Federation, Onochie Peter, said all items on the JVC proceeds were not yet available because they were still waiting for response from CBN and NNPCL.
Peter, who’s the Director Audit Monitoring, also said the office was not involved in the payments of JVCs transactions, but only received proceeds.
Surprised at his statement, the Committee Chairman, Fulata queried why documents were not made available.
“The documents we are asking must pass through you. The account general even for record keeping doesn’t have something like this? No wonder we are experiencing these leakages in our revenues, our investment is not tracked. We are looking for money left right and center. You should be able to get these documents. You should have these kinds of records in your system.”
In his response, the Accountant General’s representative exonerated his office of any wrong doings.
Reacting to his disclosure, Gbillah accused NNPCL of operating as a quasi government on its own, saying that there was a separate cash call account that even the accountant general has no access to.
In his ruling on the matter, Committee Chairman Fulata requested, while they wait for NNPCL GMD to appear before it, the Central Bank of Nigeria to submit details of the JV cash calls accounts domiciled in the apex bank.
Earlier, the Speaker of the House, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila lamented that Nigeria was being short-changed in the JVs and PSCs agreements.
The Speaker added that the investigative hearing will be fair to all parties.
