At the committee meeting on Tuesday, Rep. Fred Agbedi (PDP-Bayelsa) made a motion that was adopted.
Agbedi made the motion and stated that the invitees' attitude made the arrest warrant unavoidable.
The CEOs had been invited four times, he claimed, but they had not responded, and the parliament operated on a timetable.
After the Speaker, Rep. Tajudeen Abbas, had done his research, he stated that the Inspector General of Police should issue an arrest order so that the CEOs could appear before the committee.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Michael Irom (APC-Cross River), stated in his decision that the I-G should make sure the CEOs appeared before the committee on December 14.
The petition's foundation, according to petitioner Mr. Fidelis Uzowanem, was the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) report from 2021.
He claimed that the report summarized the transactions that occurred in the oil and gas sector in 2021 and that NEITI might be subject to legal challenges.
We accepted the challenge to look into the report and found that all NEITI had done was compile a list of instances of fraud that have occurred in the oil and gas sector.
"It began in 2016 because we have been monitoring the situation and petitioned this committee to look into what transpired.
"We can confidently fund the proposed $27.5 trillion budget for 2024 from the recoverable amount found in the NEITI report."
He said that the NNPCL had been involved in illicit transactions whereby certain oil businesses that did not produce crude were paid cash core—a sum equivalent to the output of crude oil—and that these transactions were essentially being concealed
"We also discovered that NNPCL used the cash core payment as a conduit for money laundering, and we discovered that NEITI was able to hide this in its report," he continued.
"Total Exploration and Production Nigeria-Ltd was paid 168 million dollars in 2021, according to NEITI reports, but an analysis of the company's submission reveals that it actually received 292 million dollars."
Stated differently, NNPCL laundered 124 million dollars through Total because funds that were formally given to Total could not have been hidden if they had not been intended for illicit uses.
"As for Chevron, documents originating from Chevron revealed that they received as much as 267 million dollars, but the dollar payment NEITI puts forward in its report was 76 million dollars."
"In other words, NEITI hid the fact that 191 million was laundered under Chevron's cover; additionally, Nigeria Agip Company received 188 million dollars, but NEITI failed to report any of it."
The CEO of Western Africa Exploration and Production, the CEO of Ethiopian Eastern Exploration and Production Company Ltd., and the CEO of National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) were among those detained.