Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, has reacted to the court injunction ordering the House of Representatives to stop all actions probing Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke’s N10billion chattered jet issue.
Speaking about the latest development on Tuesday, Tambuwal revealed that the House had resolved to seek legal opinion on Alison-Madueke’s action of suing the legislature.
Tambuwal explained the House’s position on the matter in relation to the directive issued by the Abuja Federal High Court earlier in April.
Getting the brief about the court injunction on Monday, Tambuwal said his immediate reaction was to advise the Committee on Public Accounts to pause action in order to afford the House some time to get the real picture of things.
Reacting to Tambuwal speech on the court injunction at Tuesday’s plenary session, some members of the House complained that the court injunction translates into interference by the Judiciary into what is essentially the work of the legislature. They pointed out that such interference is in conflict with the provisions of Sections 88/89 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which empowered the National Assembly to investigate any official or agency of government for the purpose of exposing corruption.
“My attention was drawn to the matter that the minister, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other stakeholders have gone to court. I immediately sought for consultations. The result of my consultations is to seek formal legal opinion on the status of the action, not necessarily because as a lawyer myself, I do not know the position of the law,” Tambuwal said.
“I wanted us as a House to be properly guided. When we get the legal advice, we will take it up from there.”
Tambuwal explained that the court has merely put the House on notice, saying no express orders stopping the investigation had been issued.
On Monday, It had been revealed to the media that Alison-Madueke had obtained an interim court order stopping the House of Representatives from further investigations on the N10billion public funds she allegedly used for leasing private jets for personal use for two years.
The document with suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/295/2014, issued by a federal court in Abuja had ordered that the House, its committees or any of its representatives may not summon Alison-Madueke or request her to produce papers, documents or give evidence relating to the jet spending.
The presiding judge, Justice A. R. Mohammed, had ruled further that the House cannot arrest the minister for not honoring any summon with the intention of answering for the allegation under probation.
The interim court order was dated 14th April. When the injunction was issued, the court had directed the House to present a representative on 17th April to convince the court on why the interim court order should not be a full court injunction.
On 26th March, the House had sent letters to Alison-Madueke; Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Andrew Yakubu; VistaJet International; Evergreen Aviation Terminal, operators of private Jets and the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) in preparation to probe all concerned on the chartered private jet saga.
Signed by Chairman of the Committee, Honourable Samuel Olamilekan Adeola, the letter had requested the Minister to “tender a written submission within one week about her role and everything she knows about the troublesome transactions, and if as Minister she is entitled to such chartered private jets for private use, and whether or not she has breached public service rules, and state who is responsible for the bills”.
The committee had demanded that all other necessary information that would be useful in investigating the issue should be produced.
The committee had told Yakubu to forward “all information relating to the deal from year 2011 till date, the level of involvement of his corporation, the contractual agreement between his corporation and the operators of the private jets and its financial commitment to it since year 2011 till date”.
According to sources close to the committee, a request had also been placed to the operators of the private jets calling for all “the contracts documents between them and NNPC from 2011 till date, all the flight schedules, the passengers’ manifests from the 2011 till date and the amount of money paid to them during the period under review”.
The probe into Alison-Madueke’s use of private jets for personal trips with bills paid by the government had been inspired by a motion moved by Honourable Samuel Adejare.
The committee had expressed interest in knowing if and why there was no valid contract agreement between the NNPC/Petroleum Resources Ministry and the private jets operators for the lease of the 850 Challenger Aircraft which was frequently used by the Minister.
Trips involving Global Express XRS ,tail number S5-GMG and tail number OE-LGX,OE-LSS and OE-INA costing $300,000 (about N50m) per trip – way above an estimated cost of N7.5million for the same trip – were among the flight schedules operated on foreign trips by the Minister between 2012 and 2013.
A trip on 21st December 2012 from the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja to the United Kingdom with the Global Express XRS, tail number: OE-LGX which costed N57.5million against estimated N6million was also alleged.
