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official unpublished papers, books, and records.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applicants by the respondents are unpublished official records, and the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.”
