NASS summons Kachikwu, Fashola, Waziri Adio over refineries, others

The two chambers of the National Assembly have summoned key play­ers in the petroleum in­dustry to appear before them over the state of the country’s refiner­ies and alleged missing N1trillion oil revenue fund.

While the House of Representatives has threatened to arrest the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Ka­chikwu, if he fails to ap­pear before itwithin one week, the Senate sum­moned the Executive Secretary of the Nige­ria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) to defend his report that N1trillion oil revenue is missing.

The lower House also summoned the Minis­ter of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola (SAN), the Ni­gerian Bulk Electricity Trading PLC (NBET), the National Electricity and Regulatory Com­mission (NERC) and other stakeholders to a hearing on the crisis in the Power sector.

The threat to arrest Kachikwu was attributed to his failure to appear before the House Com­mittee on Privatisation to answer questions on the planned sale of the nation’s refineries.

The committee, which threatened to invoke relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to compel the minister to appear before it, had invited Kachikwu to explain reasons why the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) rather than the Bureau of Public En­terprises (BPE) opened bids for the sale of the three refineries in Warri, Kaduna and Port Har­court.

The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Ahmed Yerima (APC Bauchi) who was not pleased with the minis­ter’s absence at the hear­ing, told the Group Ex­ecutive Director (GED) in charge of refineries at the NNPC, Mr Anibor Kragba, that despite the resolution of the com­mittee two weeks ago di­recting the corporation to shelve the planned sale of refineries, the NNPC, according to media reports, went ahead with the exercise.

The decision to sum­mon Fashola and others was sequel to a motion under matters of ur­gent public importance entitled ‘Urgent need to address the epileptic electricity supply across the nation’ sponsored by Johnson Agbonayinma.