The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday accused the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) LTD of shielding its subsidiaries from honouring several parliament’s summons extended to them over audit queries raised against them running to several trillions of Naira over the years.
Chairman of the Committee, Hon Oluwole Oke (Osun-PDP) disclosed this when the Management of the NNPC led by its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Mallam Umar Ajiya, who represented the Group Managing Director (GMD), Mele Kyari, appeared before the committee on numerous queries raised against the agency.
Hon Oke expressed displeasure over the failure of the NNPC and its subsidiaries to honour all the invitations that were extended to them on the various audit queries from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation which bordered on gross violation of financial regulations and non-redition of financial accounts as and when due.
He said that consequently, the Committee had resolved to extract the entire queries from the audit reports and publish them in the national dailies for the general public as well as the presidency to see how the people saddled with the responsibility of running the agencies are running them.
Hon Oke declared that the parliament of the Ninth Assembly would no longer tolerate such lukewarm attitudes from the heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government anymore in the overall interest of the nation.
According to him, “we are not here to persecute anybody or any agency, it is just for the principle of fair hearing we are inviting the MDAs to defend the queries raised against them by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation.
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“We are calling you to appear before us over the queries, if you don’t come, we have no other option than to uphold the queries, if you don’t have something to hide, why are you running away from the parliament?”
Hon Oke directed the Clerk of the Committee to channel fresh letters of summons for the heads of the subsidiaries through the GMD and that each letter should contain a synopsis of the audit queries as it affects each of the subsidiaries.
He added that the GMD should personally lead the heads of the subsidiaries to the hearing to respond to the queries on the day they are to appear
In his response, the Chief Financial Officer, Mallam Ajiya pleaded with the Committee that the Management would never have any reason to shield the heads of its subsidiaries
He said that the GMD himself had planned to appear in person before the Committee on Wednesday but for certain circumstances beyond his control, assuring that henceforth the story would not be the same again.
and then