Reps Threaten Ministers Zainab Ahmed, Abubakar Malami Over $2.4bn Oil Probe

House of Representatives Adhoc Committee has threatened the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, and Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN) to appear before the committee or risk an arrest.

Ahmed and Malami were supposed to be present before the committee over the alleged loss of $2.4 billion in revenue from the illegal sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil export in 2015.

The committee had reinvited the ministers on Wednesday's hearing in Abuja, after the top officials failed to appear before the committee during the previous sitting, held on April 11.

Chairman of the committee, Mark Gbillah said during Wednesday's hearing that Ahmed and Malami are not cooperating, despite sending them letters of invitation.

"We've seen documentation from the Accountant General's office, where the minister of finance approved the payment of a substantially significant amount of money to so-called whistle-blowers where details of monies recovered were not provided," Gbillah continued, Vanguard reported.

The chairman further shared that the committee heard via media reports shared by the federal government, "indicating that millions of dollars were recovered through whistle-blower revelations on behalf of the country."

However, Gbillah disclosed that as a parliament, they had "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 further shared that the committee has looked at the functions of the Attorney General's office and did not find 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 whistleblower who made a formal report to Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) about $200m paid into two companies accounts 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," Gbillah added.

He urged the ministers to "provide clarity on the inflows that have come in from whistleblowers' recoveries, and about these monies that were recovered, and the CBN is required to provide information that has been provided by these whistleblowers 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."

Gbillah made a "formal and final" notice to the top officials to appear before the committee in order to give evidence regarding the allegations.

During the previous hearing, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila said Nigeria might lose $23 billion this year to the crime. As per the speaker, in January and July 2022 alone, the country lost $10 billion to crude oil theft.