Punchng:
Court rejects Diezani’s prayers to stop Reps’ probe
A Federal High Court in Abuja, on Monday refused a
proposed amendment by the Minister of Petroleum
Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, to her suit
challenging the National Assembly’s power to probe her
spending of N10bn on chartered jet.
The minister, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation are the plaintiffs in
the suit.
Their proposed amendments are seeking additional prayers
to their suit.
The fresh prayers are to seek the court’s pronouncement on
whether by the virtue of provisions of section 88 of the
constitution, the National Assembly has the power to conduct
oversight functions of probing government’s Ministries
Departments and Agencies after receiving a petition to that
effect.
Justice Ahmed Mohammed in his ruling on Monday held that
granting such an amendment would change the character of
the claims contained in the original suit before the court.
But the judge granted the proposed amendment to include a
prayer seeking the court to determine whether or not the
proposed investigative public hearing by the House of
Representatives was not illegal, null and void for failure to
comply with the requirement of section 88 of the 1999
constitution.
The court had on June 19 made an order restraining the
House of Representatives from going ahead with the public
hearing on the allegation that Alison-Madueke spent N10bn
on a chartered aircraft.
The order of the court is to subsist pending the hearing of the
substantive suit.
Justice Mohammed had given the order ahead of the plan by
the House Committee on Public Accounts to carry out the
probe on June 25, 26 and 27, 2014.