NASS threaten sanction for 20 oil companies for shunning Committee invitation

The Senate on Thursday expressed its displeasure at 20 oil companies operating in Nigeria that failed to appear before its committee in spite of being given over one week notice.

This was disclosed by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Sen. Peter Nwaoboshi who chaired the joint committee of both chambers during an interactive session with the companies.


He described as disobedient the refusal of the companies to appear before the committees while others sent junior staff instead of senior management staff as stipulated in the letter.

The joint committee agreed that the defaulting oil companies be re-invited for the last time with clear warnings that there would be sanctions in the event of any further default.

``Let me make it clear that we take serious exception to disobedience of invitation of the National Assembly.

``Those companies that have disobeyed us, we have decided to give them one more chance and ask the secretariat to do a strong worded letter to them.

``They have to come here and we are not going to accept anybody less than the level of Executive Director, they must come here.

``I want to believe that they will not allow us to exercise our constitutional powers of bringing them to the National Assembly.

``This is not a place for jokes, we are dealing with the laws of the land and nobody is above the law of the land, so we will take it that we will pardon them for today.

``The secretariat is directed to do another letter to them and invite them to come, where they fail, we would take the next step available to us,” he said.

He commended the 11 companies who were represented out of the 31 companies that were invited.
In his remark, a member of the Committee Sen. Matthew Urhoghide (Edo South) stressed that the national Assembly should not and would not tolerate any further disobedience by the oil companies
.
``We can no longer tolerate this, there shall be no more invitations after this, if they are not here the next time their should be serious sanctions,” he said.

Out of the 20 companies not represented, four were represented by staff not up to the level of General Manager and their representation was rejected. Some of the companies not represented included Exxon Mobile, Conoil Nig. PLC, Niger Delta Petroleum Resources, Oriental Energy among others.