Minister of Petroleum, Dieziani Alison-Madueke, who has been in the middle of a 10bn jet scandal has secured a court injunction stopping the House of Representatives from further investigating her, Premium Times reports. Alison-Madueke had approached a federal high court in Abuja where she asked the court to restrain the House members to discontinue any probe involving her.
Justice . R. Mohammed who presided over the case, barred the house members or their committees from summoning her for any further investigations or even ordering her arrest if she failed to appear before the house. According to reports, the court injuction was secured on April 14th but was only made public today as the House intended to commence further investigation on the matter today.
Speaking on the court injunction, the Chairman of the House Public Accounts Committee, Solomon Olamilekan said they were surprised by the court injunction.
"Today is April 28, the committee scheduled to receive the honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources and other agencies that have stake in this investigation. But as we speak, there is a court order, which has been served to the office of the speaker, even though the committee has not gotten the copy of that order. The nature of the court order is simple. They are just restraining us from carrying out our own investigation" he said.
Spokesperson of the house, Zakary Mohammed said the house would obey the court injunction
"As a law abiding arm of government, we will tarry a while and of course take a legal opinion as far as issues are concerned" he said
A member of the House, Samuel Adejare had on March 20th presented a motion before the house accusing the minister of committing about 500,000 Euros (N130 million naira) monthly to maintain an aircraft for her personal use and those of her immediate family.
