Sen.  Jibril (2nd right) at the committee meeting which threatened to sanction the NNPCL Chief and others for shunning their invitation.


By Abba Onyekachukwu,  Abuja


The Chairman, Senate Ad-hoc Committee on the Turnaround Maintenance of Three Refineries, Senator Isa Jibril has said that the continued refusal to appear before the committee by the Chief Executives of NNPC, Upstream Regulatory Agency and his Downstream counterpart, among others would be sanctioned by the Senate.

Sen Jibril, speaking to journalists after adjourning the meeting as a result of the refusal of the oil Chiefs to appear before the committee and sending their subordinates to represent them, the chairman said: "The Chief Executives of NNPC, Upstream Regulatory Agency and the Downstream Regulatory Agency are supposed to be here. And there are other subsidiaries of the NNPC that are supposed to be here.

"The issue is this: I want to believe that they have something to hide and we asked for these documents about two weeks ago. These are documents that should ordinarily be available at any time 

"The Chief Executives refused to turn up because they knew that we knew what has been happening there and we shall make sure that we bring them to book. 

"And whoever thinks that he is above the law, at the Senate here, we can bring such person to book."

Asked if the Senate committee will be transparent in its duties, as well as what will happen, if the Chief Executives refuse to turn up, he responded thus: "Certainly, we shall be transparent and if they refuse to turn up, we know the next thing to do and we have our guidelines. 

"Some of them may go to jail and loose their jobs, because so much money has been spent and non of the refineries is working today and we are talking about trillions of Naira. We are talking about operational expenses which relates to the cost of production. Why do you come with operational expenses on companies that are moribund?

"So there are so many questions to answer and we know that they will turn up and if they don't, we know what next to do."