In what looks like a Biblical quotation, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria's Minister Of Petroleum Resources has urged the National Assembly to seek first the face of President Goodluck Jonathan and every other thing shall be added unto them. The minister said neither the National Assembly nor its various committees could invite her and the agencies under her ministry to produce unpublished documents and other records without a prior consent of the President., www.thenationonlineng.net reports. She argued that it was not within the powers of the National Assembly to personally conduct investigation into criminal allegations relating to corruption or fraud in public offices.
According to her, the lawmakers’ frequent invitation to public officers on spurious grounds is distracting them. Alison-Madueke said the lawmakers were only empowered under the constitution to exercise oversight functions over her ministry and agencies under its supervision “with respect to public funds, through their various committees so set up, which oversight is only for the purpose of enabling them to make laws and correct defects in existing laws”.
The minister said where, in the course of performing their oversight functions, the lawmakers stumble on suspicious dealings by public officers, “they are constitutionally permitted to ‘direct or cause to be directed’ the appropriate authority or government agency to carry out the said investigation, and not to personally or physically carry same out as lawmakers”.
These are among Mrs Alison-Madueke’s arguments in the fresh suit she filed with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) against the National Assembly to stall the investigation by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives on the allegation that the minister spent about N10 billion on aircraft leases.
According to www.thenationonlineng.net, the minister and the NNPC, in a supporting affidavit, argued that they would not honour the invitation sent to them and other officials of agencies under them by the National Assembly. The National Assembly has not met the conditions that will make them to honour the invitation and produce the materials the lawmakers requested.
“As a condition precedent to the said invitation to investigate the respondents (both chambers of the National Assembly) are constitutionally required to show that they have passed a resolution duly published in their journal or in the official gazette of the Government of the Federation. “The respondents have not, in any or all their invitations to the applicants, shown or displayed any such evidence of prior publication of any such resolution, if there was any…”
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