The Minister of
Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani
Alison-Madueke, has said that the National
Assembly cannot investigate her without first obtaining the consent of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Alison-Madueke, who is being probed by the House of
Representatives over an allegation that she spent N10bn on a chartered
aircraft, said the House Committee on Public Accounts lacked the power to even
summon her to appear before it.
The minister and the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
made the submissions in an affidavit they filed in support of a fresh suit before an Abuja Federal High Court to stop the probe.
The suit was filed last week but the affidavit was obtained
by our correspondent on Sunday. Alison-Madueke and the NNPC sued the Senate and
the House of Representatives as the first and second respondents respectively.
The suit is marked FHC/ABJ/CS/346/2014.
The supporting affidavit deposed to by Dominic Ezerioha, a lawyer in the law firm of Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), states,
“That by law, the respondents are
enjoined to seek the consent of the President before ordering the applicants to
tender the official unpublished papers, books, and records.
“All the documents
being requested of the applicants by the respondents are unpublished official
records, and the respondents in all their invitations have never shown to the
applicants, any such evidence of presidential consent, after numerous demands
made by the applicants that they do so.”
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the fresh suit and
the respondents have yet to file their defense. Meanwhile, a similar suit which
the minister had earlier filed would come up for hearing before Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the FHC,
Abuja on Monday (today).
Attached to the fresh suit are 41 exhibits, which are mainly
letters of invitation served by the National Assembly on the NNPC and the office of the minister
for the purpose of probing activities in the oil industry since 1999.
The House had asked the minister to appear before it to
answer questions relating to the scandal on June 17. But their law firm argued
that the law required the Senate and the House of Representatives to first
obtain the President’s consent before they could validly summon its clients. It
cited Sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
1999, as amended and Section 8 of the Legislatives Houses (Powers and
Privileges) Act Cap. L12 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2010, to back its
claims.
The applicants are seeking ‘‘an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents whether
by themselves, servants, staff, committees, privies, proxies or any other
persons howsoever called from summoning them or any agencies under their
supervision or control, to appear before them for the purpose of giving
evidence and/or producing any papers, books, records or other documents, which
relate to the unpublished official records of the Applicants without the
consent of the President..’’
They are therefore seeking among their 10 prayers before the
court, “an order of perpetual injunction
restraining the respondents whether by themselves, servants, staff, committees,
privies, proxies or any other persons howsoever called from summoning the
applicants or any agencies under the applicants’ supervision or control, to
appear before them for the purpose of giving evidence and/or producing any
papers, books, records or other documents, which relate to the unpublished
official records of the applicants without the consent of the President .”
The law firm is also
urging the court to declare that the respondents lacked the power “to conduct
investigation into allegations of fraud, corruption or other criminal
activities said to have occurred in the agencies under the applicants’
supervision or control when such probe or investigation is not for the purpose
of enabling the respondents make laws or correct any defect in existing laws.”
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