Appear In Seven Days Or Get Arrested, Reps Tell 17 NNPC Subsidiaries

The House of Representatives, through its Committee on Public Accounts Committee has issued a seven-day ultimatum to heads of the 17 subsidiaries of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to appear before it or risk being arrested by warrant of the House.

The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation had in its audit queries accused the subsidiaries of failing to render their audited accounts over the years.

The subsidiaries with queries against them are the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited, Petroleum Products Marketing Company Limited, Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency and NNPC Retail Limited, National Petroleum Investment & Management Services.

The House Committee has been holding investigative hearings on the audit queries issued by the OAUGF against ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government.

The committee had also summoned the NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr. Mele Kyari, as well as the head of the corporation’s subsidiaries, they were to respond to the various audit queries issued by the OAUGF.

The corporation and its subsidiaries were accused of deliberate and reckless refusal to render accounts from 2014 to 2018, in breach of external financial regulations in the queries.

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The committee had earlier threatened to issue arrest warrants against the heads of the subsidiaries due to their failure to show up.

While issuing the ultimatum on Friday, due to the non-appearance of the managements of the subsidiaries, the chairman of the committee, Oluwole Oke, threatened that the panel would be forced to issue warrants against the heads.

He stated, “They are to appear before the committee at its investigative hearing on the several audit queries raised against them by the Auditor-General of the Federation over the years.”

The Chairman of the committee said the committee just discovered that while all MDAs had been using Treasury Single Account, the NNPC had been operating its subsidiaries commercial bank accounts without the knowledge of the Accountant General of the Federation.