The Chairman of the Senate Appropriation Committee, Senator Adeola Olamilekan, issued a directive on Wednesday requiring the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, to appear before the committee within 24 hours.
Olamilekan instructed Kyari to be accompanied by the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), cautioning that failure to comply would be considered undermining the legislature and sabotaging the legislative process.
The mandated presentation includes a list of all individual companies operating with OML licenses in Nigeria, along with the daily approved total production output. The Senator expressed concerns about the attribution of some revenues crucial for the 2024 budget to the NNPCL, emphasizing that the company is owned by the Federal Government and accountable to it, including the three arms of government.
Previously, the NNPCL had declined Senate summons for the second time, impeding the progress of the committee’s investigation into over N11 trillion expenditure on the turnaround maintenance of refineries between 2010 and 2023.
The absence of Kyari, central to the investigation, hindered the Senate panel’s efforts to move forward on the matter.